1st "official" granite photo attempt

[Tim Bateson]

Not being a fan of PhotoGrav, I still have to say the PhotoGrav one looks better. To each his/her own.

Dee, You did a great job in the composition/arrangement of the photos.

[Steve Clarkson]

Interesting.......maybe the key is to use the Prismacolors to touch up the tile instead of coloring the whole thing......

I bought a white prismacolor pencil today.....I'll play around with it.

But the bottom line is that we need someone to show us how to process the photo before engraving.....so that it is optimal for engraving, not necessarily so that it looks good onscreen. I think the key is that histogram.....whatever THAT is!

If we call it the NYS Engravers Conference, it'll be tax deductible.....

[Frank Corker]

Tim I think you might be pleasantly suprised by what the Epilog printer driver is capable of doing. Let me get you to try this one.

Get a piece of black acrylic.

Take a decent colour photograph. Resize it. Make a copy.
Put one through photograv (thus making it an 8bit b/w negative) and engrave.

On the other, make it a black and white negative, resize it in Corel if you want. Choose 'normal' for picture not 'stucki' or the others and engrave.

Out and out, the one not going through photograv will win hands down. It comes out just like a real photograph. Try it. Epilog Rocks!!

[Dee Gallo]

Not being a fan of PhotoGrav, I still have to say the PhotoGrav one looks better. To each his/her own.

Dee, You did a great job in the composition/arrangement of the photos.

Thanks, Tim -

It helps when you have done a few layouts before. The key to this one was the photo prep. And I think Frank has convinced me to upgrade to the new epilog driver (finally).

Steve - NYS Engravers Conference has a nice ring to it... now who will volunteer to teach us what a histogram is and how to use it? I'll make the cookies! Or is rum cake more enticing?

cheers, dee

[Frank Corker]

Well if you guys got yourselves on Skype this wouldn't be hard to achieve!

[Dee Gallo]

Well if you guys got yourselves on Skype this wouldn't be hard to achieve!

And how exactly do you get your piece of cake through Skype ?

[Tim Bateson]

I can't believe this! Frank trying to brag on the superior quality of the Epilog driver over PhotoGrav. Me having always held that same believe, but now pushing PhotoGrav for Granite.

Now I know it's a full moon!

I do prefer the Epilog driver in most cases, but I like the result of PhotoGrav on Granite. Honestly with the cost of materials I haven't even tried the new Epilog driver on Ganite. I had back in 2007 - 2 versions ago and wasn't happy.

Frank if I find the Epilog driver does produce better on Granite, I just may put my copy of PhotoGrav up for sale as I don't believe I use it for any other material.

Also kudos to Epilog - now get busy on a production 64bit driver.

[Frank Corker]

Tim, I don't think it's time to bin photograv yet, like you say it is preference. I'm actually one of those who has only just been converted to trying it first before taking the photograv step. Anthony Welch is the one who kept needling me to try it, well, he was right!

I think on wood I have yet to find the perfect way of getting a great image. It's very close, but still no biscuit. However on the black stuff, like black acrylic so far the Epilog's drivers have been the better result. The same with clear acrylic, the image just has more appeal to it, without having to do anything fancy. When you put a real quality image in, convert it to 8bit greyscale, the result becomes unbelieveable.

I think if I had stuck to my guns and wasn't prepared to make changes for the better, I could well have ended up eating another hat!

[Bill Cunningham]

I have always found the when doing the Romark/Encore/etc. laser badge material, even the normal 'clipart' setting in my old driver works very well @ 300 dpi. I find the driver alone also works well on Anodized Alum, enamel brass/aluminum, cermark photos on stainless, gold alumamark, and Marble of all colours. But not granite, glass or wood, for that I need photograv..

[Dave Coble]

Steve,


You're right, most of this is in your photo processing. At least from my limited experience so far. You can't even really apply a consistent formula to every image either as they will all have differing brightness/contrast going in. You will develop an eye for it though as time goes on. Once you zero in on the right combination I would recommend that you file a set of images that you can later reference for general comparrison to try to acheive the same qualities in future processing. What works for me (in general) is the following:

250dpi image (resize to this dpi if not starting there).

Adjust to grayscale.

Adjust brightness/contrast/clip whites so that nothing is completely black and nothing is completely blown out white. (sometimes this requires a separate layer from the foreground to the background to adjust balance but not usually)

Unsharp Mask Filter (amount 400, radius 2.0)

Import to corel

Invert the image (assuming your are using black granite)

*Notice - I don't even use PhotoGrav for granite at all

Power 23, speed 100, ppi 250 (50w machine)

Once it's done, fill with Winton Oil Color 40 Titanium White (available at Michael's)


This piece (the same $5 home depot granite you used) was done exactly like that except that the background was something entirely different in the original photo, oh and the girl on the right was doing a little something goofy with her eyes so I fixed that, and put a little vignette on the edges. The text I ran a separate pass at 100 power for deep engraving and filled with the same titanium white.

[Steve Clarkson]

Thanks Dave......interesting....another non-Photograver....

[Greg Sloan]

Steve,

Armour-all is used to lighten the photo. Sprayed on, let soak. I usually let it soak overnite. Wipe off before you engrave over it.

As far as double pass, if you don't move your tile after first pass do it again. If its just the lettering you want deeper then just lay it out as blue or any other color and boost the power on that color. One pass works for me and color fills great.

I engrave photos at 27power and 100speed
Lettering I engrave at 80power and 80speed