Help with images

[Travis Shipman]

Hello all,

I am a new laser owner stationed at Barksdale AFB Louisiana. This is a great forum for new users as many of my questions have been answered just by looking through the posts. Thanks to everyone. I'm just starting to do a lot of engraving for different agencies on base and ran into a problem. I have several images I need to convert to black and white for engraving but haven't had much luck with Corel 12. I also downloaded a copy of Adobe Illustrator but ran into problems installing it. Can someone please point me in the right direction as to somebody who can do this for me or tell me how to go about doing this in Corel or Photoshop? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again to everyone.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Travis;
Welcome to the Creek. Converting images to black/white or grayscale is really pretty simple. In Photoshop you have a bit more control .
Open your image- go to Image-Mode-Grayscale, then adjust Brightness/Contrast as desired.
In Corel, open or import your image, go to Bitmap-Mode- Grayscale.
Good Luck
George

[Bruce Volden]

Travis,


Could you explain more of "not having much luck w/Corel12". I don't quite follow what you are trying to accomplish. Is your graphic you wish to engrave a real "busy" picture or something simple? Bruce

[Travis Shipman]

Thanks George for your reply. I've done both of these steps already but I need a true black and white image since it will be engraved on Rowmark plastic. I tried the black/white option in Corel and you can barely tell what it is. Any suggestions? Thanks again

[Travis Shipman]

Hello, Bruce;
Thanks for your reply also. One of the images I'm trying to convert is a simple image but I'm having trouble converting it to black and white so I can laser it to Rowmark plastic. The image is attached. Thanks again.

[James Stokes]

Here it is vectored just add text and change colors any way you want

[Travis Shipman]

Thanks a lot for your time James. Is there any way you can email it to me? I can't open or save the file.

[Jeff Chumbley]

When downloading, ensure the file name is patch.cdr and it will save it as a cdr file for you to open with Corel

Jeff

[Travis Shipman]

Thanks everyone for your help. It's really nice to have a great forum with great people to help out. Sorry it took so long to respond but I've been very busy.

[Joe Pelonio]

Travis, try opening in Paint rather than draw. The do Image, color mode, B&W.
If engraving on black then do image, transform, invert. Then save and import to Draw.

[Carol VanArnam]

I have corel 12. How do you convert jpeg or bmp files to vector files? I see the file on this thread then poof you've converted it to a vector. How did you do that..... i'll mail you 50 pounds of chocolate if you teach me that trick.....

[Mike Null]

Travis and others who want to do AF engraving:

Many of the insignias, patches, ranks, and equipment art can be found on this site. Images which are eps formats are vector images which can be imported into CorelDraw.

This is the most comprehensive site of all the military sites and, I think, the only one which offers vector images.

http://www.af.mil/art/

[Bob Reda]

Carol,

In corel you can use trace to make it into vectors or you can use a free program called inkscape. Just google and it will lead you to it.

Bob

[Ed Newbold]

Thanks George for your reply. I've done both of these steps already but I need a true black and white image since it will be engraved on Rowmark plastic. I tried the black/white option in Corel and you can barely tell what it is. Any suggestions? Thanks again

Try this one. Just add the "curved text" to it and you should be good to go. If you need help with the curved text, just ask and I'll throw that in too.

Cheers,