Mirror

[Tim Bateson]

Devon, It may help if you can add your machine type and power to your signature line. Sometimes specific machines/power will produce different or more specific answers from those with the same equipment.

[Devon Jones]

ok i just did it i still have had no luck i ran high power and high speed and cant break through the mirror its driving me nuts

[Tim Bateson]

What do you mean by "lose the depth"?

[Devon Jones]

ok maybe i used the wrong word ...................um............ well its a picture of my kids i used photograv on light cherry wood to engrave and use 50 speed and 75 power and i am on pass 3 and just now got through some of the mirror

[Devon Jones]

and to answer the question maybe i meant its demintion or um i dont know it just looks horrible

[Steve Clarkson]

and to answer the question maybe i meant its demintion or um i dont know it just looks horrible

Devon, I use a much higher power....I go around 100p and 50s.....sometimes it frosts the glass a bit, but if you use black paint, alot of times you can't tell.

I think there is also a difference between not breaking through the mirror backing (speed/power issue) and having it look horrible (pre-engraving photo processig issue).

[Devon Jones]

so on the photo that i have seen posted on here that look great. (including yours) is everything is a different shade. meaning some gold ,some throught the mirror, some black and whatever else colors i see is that what you are coming up with. its not that i have to see it all in detail but the paint helps? did that make sense?

[Steve Clarkson]

You must be either blind or lying about mine......but that's OK, I'll take any compliment I can get!

If you're talking about different colors......what you need to do is only send part of the picture to the laser.....ie. just the shirts......then paint that part, then engrave the next part.....ie. the faces. On a photo, that's going to be VERY complicated......you can do that with graphics (like a logo).....or text. You could first engrave text, then paint say blue, then engrave the border and paint say yellow, then engrave the photo and paint black.

And yes......sometimes it doesn't look good right out of the laser, but after you paint it, then the details really jump out.

[Devon Jones]

thank you

so one last thing that im still (yes still) confused about. am i going through all of the backing just some is deeper into the glass part or does the backing also help with the picture?

[Steve Clarkson]

The backing does help with the picture......but for the most part, you have to go all the way through the backing. If you go too hard though, you will frost the glass, and then it might not look as good. That's where you have to practice, like Tim said.

[Devon Jones]

i just spray painted two of my test runs and while they still both look like trash maybe it will help understand how lame i am at doing this.


when it dries i will post prob tomorrow am............ cali time

[Steve Clarkson]

Devon, like I said before......it might not be the laser speed/power that you're using, but rather how you are processing the picture (ie. in photograv) before you engrave. If you got through the backing OK, then work on the actual picture.

Maybe you should post your cdr with the picture after it has been run through photograv and someone with more experience can evaluate it for you.

[Tim Bateson]

As a starting point on mirrors I use:

For Photos - 27/100/400
For Graphics - 30/100/400

With your 120w you may be looking at 100/1/400 Actually I wouldn't know where to start for your settings. I know there are some mathematicians here that could do the calculations.

To answer an earlier question - No I did not use PhotoGrav. The dithering functions of the Epilog driver are fantastic.

[Devon Jones]

ok tim so then do you just resize your photo for the size of the mirror and run it? or do you change anythign on the photo at all? like gold method or turn to an 8bit gs? thank you everyone for the help

[Dave Johnson29]

do you just resize your photo for the size of the mirror and run it? or do you change anythign on the photo at all? like gold method or turn to an 8bit gs? thank you everyone for the help

Devon,

The single biggest leap I made with this was after a suggestion by Dan Hintz and that was to match the dpi of the picture with that of the laser.

I load the pic into CorelPhoto and Crop to where I wanted it.

I Resample to 254DPI (my lasers default) and Save.

I Resample again to the Width and Height I want.

From here it depends on the pic a bit as I sometimes use the Gold method and sometimes trial and error until the pic looks about right.

If not using the Gold method, I Grayscale, maybe ligthen, darken or Unsharpen.

Then Mode to B&W and try all 3 algorithms, Jarvis, Stucki and Floyd to see which one gives the least amount of wide open white spaces and the most even distribution of dots.

My stuff is satrting to look acceptable thanks to all the suggestions from this group.