I bought my Universal VL300 50 watts 6 months ago. Upon opening my shop I went into a thousand different directions. After a few months of playing around we focused on two things -
1) gift items on wood with photo engravings and text
2) industrial engraving / cutting of different materials for the fashion industry (for export)
Needless to say, #2 has done us some pretty good business; while the photo engravings on gift items (#1) has really taken off and we have since added a second machine ( Laserpro mercury 25watts)
We are anticipating more photo engravings on wood as the holiday season approaches and we are opening another satellite branch.
The problem is this... I bought Photograv months ago and followed the instructions to the letter. We get excellent results but only AFTER processing the BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST on Photoshop. This photoshop process alone took at least 20 to 30 minutes. And still we were not exactly guaranteed results. Sometimes the engraving would come out burnt.
I have since read others in the forum saying that in photograv it was point and click and no other external adjustments needed. Is this true? Am I wasting 30 minutes for each photo job (at least 10photos a day) ? If so how am I able to achieve those results without adjusting in photoshop?
And while we are at it, how do I find out what the optimal settings is for my laser for wooden photographs?
with the holiday season onslaught coming up, I want to be able to open the file, resize it and orient it correctly, process in photograv, open in corel and print! however, right now we are having to process in photshop for 30 minuts sometimes up to an hour if bad picture, then process in photograv, and still not get guaranteed results.
How are you guys able to do it?
What am I doing wrong ?
Tell me what I need to supply ( laser settings, photograv settings etc ??) so you can help me.
BTW, I followed the Tone Curve settings that was suggested in the manual but did not work out for us. Would come out too dark or too light depending on the picture.