Looking for opinons..Easy I'm new

[Joe Kace]

Hello All
I am new here..well I've posted before. I just did my first wood engraving on wood and was looking to see what you veterans think. I myself think it looks good but I have nothing to judge against since I just started doing these. Any opinions are welcomed.
I am using Corel 14 and photograve on Baltic Birch.

Thanks

[paul mott]

I agree with you Joe, that is wonderful.

Paul.

[Dan Hintz]

A very nice try, Joe, but I would try to get a little more contrast out of the bodies/faces before sending it to the laser. It could also just be the photo of the finished piece...

[Harper Abbot]

I agree that it looks really great, but my personal preference would be more depth of contrast to the faces.

EDIT: I never seem to get my reply right in the right place on the thread tree... I am used to another forum that I frequent. oops.

[Dan Hintz]

Harper,

Switch to linear viewing mode and be done with the tree mode... it's a royal pain to view.

[Joe Kace]

Thanks everyone for the advice. It was my first one and I sort of knew I needed more contrast. This is why I came to the group to confirm suspicions.I wanted it to go a little deeper but that comes with trial and error I guess. Thanks to everyone.

[Bill Cunningham]

Deeper is not really better.. As it drills deeper into the wood, you get more dot gain and hence less contrast, and generally it gets way too dark. Don't go for depth, go for good contrast between the different areas of facial shading. This will require a bit of practice, particularly in the photo prep. phase but wood is cheap, and it pays to practice..

[TONG LI]

My experience is that the photograv normally increases brightness and contrast, more than you need. I use corel photo- paint tone curve to reduce the brightness watching the face and make sure I have all gray scales, ie. there are no white (256) on the face. At the same time, adjust Contrast with the tone curve.

Photograv's job is to threw your gray scale into black and white dots, if you do not have all the gray scales on the face, it will just make the white area burned flat.

Tong

[TONG LI]

The other thing you need to know is the laser dot size and what dpi to use. Each material and laser power/speed setting gives you different size of dot. I would get a cheap microscope with measuring and measure the size of a single laser dot.

Then 1" divide by the dot size times 1.2 will be your photo dpi. For example if your dot size is 0.3 mm, which is 0.0118 inch, 1/0.0118x1.2=101, if you make your photo into 100 dpi, the engraved photo will have the best possible details.

If you use 200 dpi, you will lose a lot of details.

We do a lot of photos on granite, I think the principle is the same.

Tong

[Joe Kace]

Great advice, I will try to find a microscope with measuring. My process that I use is this
Photo into Corel, adjust brightness,contrast while in color
Go to bitmap
Tone curve
Export
I found that when you go directly to PG with a color pic it really doesn't do the best job. I have been giving it a bitmap that has been adjusted and I get better results.
When I got my laser I never intended to do photo's, but as I read more I decided to try it and now I just think it's awesome. It beats cutting PETG all day like I am now.

Joe

[Larry Bratton]

Joe,
You also need to add some sharpening in the process. Use the Unsharp Mask filter in Corel Photopaint. Some experimentation is required here also.

[Dan Hintz]

Joe,

There's no need to go to all of that trouble for this... lasso and brighten the areas that currently look too dark (faces, bodies, etc.). Reburn at the settings you used on the first one and you'll be significantly happier. The settings looks good, you just need to tweak the photo itself.

Wood is a relatively low-res medium... 250dpi is pretty good, maybe a bit higher for a very tight-grain species. Go higher when you want a deep burn, but it won't get you more resolution.

[Martin Boekers]

Joe,


Wood is a relatively low-res medium... 250dpi is pretty good, maybe a bit higher for a very tight-grain species. Go higher when you want a deep burn, but it won't get you more resolution.

I like the idea of catagorizing different materials with a resolution,
I think that helps greatly, esp. for those just starting out.


Marty