PhotoGrav Help Please

[Tracey Bakewell]

Hey Gang,

Just noticed the PhotoGrav 3.0 thread below, maybe this will help with my question...

I need to engrave this image on stone... a black stone, by laserbits. It engraves out a light grey not quite white. So I inverted the photo since the dog is black. I'm having terrible luck with PhotoGrav, but I am not a very experienced PhotoGrav user.

The attached file is the just clipped out, just converted to grayscale .bmp version. I gave up on all my inversions/contrasts/adjustments because I just wasn't sure what direction to take this in any further!

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Tracey

[Larry Bratton]

Tracy:
What is the material? Is it marble or granite?

[Tracey Bakewell]

Let's see... it's specifically called...

MPA 014 Chisel Edged Marble Paperweight on the www.laserbits.com website

Under their Marble Paperweights page

Thanks!

[Luke Phillips]

Tracy: I think you may need to increase the dpi on your image to 600 dpi and turn up the brightness and adjust contrast. Then run it through photograv using the black marble or black granite parameters. I just di this and it looks okay. If you pm me your email address I'll send you the parameter file and the engraved image.

[Frank Corker]

Tracey - your photograph before going to photograv needs to have a black background otherwise when you start lasering it will laser everything that is black (in your case the current white background will be lasered when it becomes a negative). I know. It's going to be awkward, black dog on a black background. If you highlight the shape of the dog using a bit of artistic lighting then it will still trun out nice.

[Anthony Welch]

I just did one with a couple sitting down holding hands. He in a black, she in a light colored dress. After photograv and engraving, he looks like a midget in a big suit, standing, with big hands. The engraving, because of the black suit, doesn't show he has a lap.

They still loved the engraving, because it was the only one of their Great G'Parents and I was able to clean it up and cut them out from the other people.

[Tracey Bakewell]

Tracy: I think you may need to increase the dpi on your image to 600 dpi and turn up the brightness and adjust contrast. Then run it through photograv using the black marble or black granite parameters. I just di this and it looks okay. If you pm me your email address I'll send you the parameter file and the engraved image.

Hey Luke! My original image is much better quality, I had to dumb it down to even attach it to this thread. I'll try the brightness and contrast this morning! I'd love to see that param file! I'll PM you shortly, gotta get my kiddies fed! Thanks! Tracey

[Jason Lippert]

[quote=Frank Corker If you highlight the shape of the dog using a bit of artistic lighting then it will still turn out nice.[/quote]

Just wondering what you mean by this exactly Frank. Are you referring to a rendered effect like a Photoshop filter or is this a Corel effect?

[Frank Corker]

Hi Jason. I hope that Tracey won't object to me showing you this. I asked her to let me have the picture so I could make some alterations to it. Look at the background. The dog is a black dog and the background removed means that it has to be a black background in order for it to engrave. You will see the highlighting that I am referring to on the back and tail and head.

[Tracey Bakewell]

Hey Frank! No worries and thanks EVERYONE for helping me get this done. Unfortunately, during this timeframe, my main computer crashed and I had been desperately scrambling to get everything re-installed and restored. I would still love to get proficient with PhotoGrave as I never would have thought to turn the background black! And the work Frank did to help edit the picture with the grass and other things was amazing! I've attached a picture of the actual result, however, it looks much better in person!