Hello from a new user (who needs a bit of help).

[Tom Bull]

Many thanks to all of you experts for all the wonderful help found on this site. Because of your input I have recently purchased a used Epilog Legend 24, 30 watt. Cindy and I have been merrily burning bits of wood, stone, and glass. I have run into a software challenge, which I am sure is simple as pie to solve, but I am an old dog learning new tricks so I need your help. Photograv wants .bmp files, and Corel makes .crd files. How do I change the .crd into a .bmp? I got all the software with the machine so it is a bit old Corel 9 and Photograv 2.11.
My real job is in stained glass, so if you have any glass related questions I would be delighted to be of any help I can.

[Joe Pelonio]

Welcome Tom. I too do stained glass, though as more of a hobby, with some income from it.

As for the files, any version of Corel Draw will allow you to export the file as a .bmp.

After saving, just click File, Export, change the type to Windows .bmp, name it, and click OK.

[Tom Bull]

THANK YOU! I knew it had to be simple, now we are going to have some more fun burning things.

[Bill Cunningham]

Tom! Just remember to export it as a 8 bit grayscale .bmp at 300 or 600 dpi.. I usually just use 300 and then burn at 600 if needed..

[Gary Hair]

Tom! Just remember to export it as a 8 bit grayscale .bmp at 300 or 600 dpi.. I usually just use 300 and then burn at 600 if needed..

And also export at the size you need it to be - you can't resize the output from PhotoGrav and get good results. They say you can't edit them either but I have had good luck with that - maybe the "don't resize" part isn't accurate either? Anyone try it?

Gary

[Stephen Beckham]

I agree with the don't resize - tried it - made some scrap...

I edit the images all the time. Not sure if I just didn't get it right in the initial conversion or if I'm just too picky. I like to clean up the letters and sometimes add shadows with the copy tool... Otherwise, I burn them as you said 300dpi convert and 600dpi burn...

[Bill Cunningham]

I edit the all the time, it's just that if you resize a binary file with that type of detail it will go all to hell on you..
The familiar photograv samples below show what happens
The first is the greyscale file (it's .jpg just for here), and then again reduced to 94% after conversion,
What I would like to try, is sometimes for glass, the photograve conversion on a 'small' photo was great, but a binary image can be a bit harsh and you don't get good results on a small portrates into glass.. I will try this when I get some free time.. Thats convert the processed photograv Engraving file to a gray scale, then engrave it at 70% black to see if a smaller picture will look better in glass.. (you can right click the 70% and use the line colour to change the overall colour of a bitmap).. When engraving, you 'should' get a combination of the more uniform etching of the 70% halftone reproducing the general pixel pattern of the previous binary picture.. This 'may' allow a better tiny image on glass