"Paint by numbers" inlay work

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Barbara;
Check out your local library for this book:
Scroll Saw Art: Realistic Pictures in Wood by Pat Spielman
Pretty clever way to use wood to make pics and may be close to what you want-unfortunately appears to be a lot of hand work to segment pics.

[Lee DeRaud]

I've been playing with a portrait of Jerry Garcia all day, the pumpkincarving.com site is great... although the image is downloaded as a pdf file which I can't seem to do anything with. I printed it and then scanned it, but I can't get the three colors true enough for any of my programs to pull them apart into separate objects. (Ex: if I ask a program to "cut out" all the black, it also "cuts out" lots of little specs that were in the grey. I need to separate them and then make them a graphic file (making the graphic file is easy, cutting the colors apart digitally is harder than I thought because scans don't give me pure black white and grey). OR I need to find a way to outline all the parts first and then I can separate them.
any ideas?

Barbara

I'd try CorelTrace, the 'Advanced Outline' method, and play with the noise filter and minimum feature size settings. You may want to try some different contrast settings for the scan.

Did you try importing the PDF directly into CorelDraw? I don't think it's a bitmap, the file size didn't look big enough. (click, click, mumble, mutter, click) Well, that didn't work ...might have better luck starting with the GIF version than the PDF, at least that will eliminate the scanning artifacts.

[Chuck Burke]

Hi Barbara,
I"m glad you are making progress. Isn't learning fun? In a frustrating way?

If I am not mistaken what you need to do, is use CorelPHOTO Paint, after you scan your image. Convert the file to "gray scale". Save the file under a new name.
Now as Lee suggested, open the file in CorelTRACE and do a "trace" or a "trace by outline". This will convert the graphic to a "vector" image. You will then save THAT file, ( CTRL + S ).
Open the traced file in CorelDRAW, and now comes the work. Since CorelTRACE only does an adequate job of "tracing" you will need to use the shape tool to clean up the graphic. ( Think of it as good practice ). Once clean you will need to "ungroup" then select the portions of the graphic you want to want to cut all at the same time, and "group" them. A tedious process, but educational.
With all of that said, I am still learning Corel myself, so there may be an easier way to do it. In the meantime we have something to work with.
I hope this has been some help.

Chuck Burke
American Pacific Awards

[Paul Buhse]

Hello everyone,

Now I know where my wife Barbara has been hanging out while I'm busy cutting and routing away! I am however close by, just ask the kids; they know exactly where I can be found! Thanks to all who are helping her out with her marguetry projects. We invested in the laser engraver to add something extra to our small wood working business and she found a market to take her ideas off in a different direction. No complaints from me! I'll just have to wait for my daughter or son to get a little older before teaching them how to operate the saws and shapers in the shop. I'm glad I turned her on to SMC and the professionals who post and share their knowledge and experiences here.

Honey, can I use the engraver later?

Paul

[Chuck Burke]

Honey, can I use the engraver later?

Paul

Good Luck!!!!!! (insert laugh here)

Chuck

[Lee DeRaud]

Barbara - Using CorelTrace on the GIF version of the pattern worked fine, but the resulting CorelDraw file is too big to post here.
I sent you an email about it.

[Barbara Buhse]

OK!!! Now we're onto something good here. Thank you again Lee for the e-mail. I owe you some cookies! The info you gave me about the adjustments in Corel Trace really hit the mark. I've erased some of the smaller pieces, and I think I'm ready to laser (yikes!). I will post the final product hopefully soon!


Barbara

[Chuck Burke]

Lee,
Forgive us newbies, but what is the "noise" filter you mentioned? How do I find it?

Thanks
Chuck

[Lee DeRaud]

Forgive us newbies, but what is the "noise" filter you mentioned? How do I find it?

It's the drop-down list (Off/Low/High) about a third of the way in from the left on the toolbar when 'Advanced Outline' is selected. Just put your cursor over each of those toolbar icons for a few seconds and it will display the name.

We're all newbies on this bus: I never used a Corel product before I bought the laser in March.

[Chuck Burke]

Thanks Lee,
Another question, the "noise" filter does what?
Chuck

[Lee DeRaud]

Thanks Lee,
Another question, the "noise" filter does what?
Chuck

Uh, filters noise?

Haven't looked to see exactly what it's doing, but I suspect it's doing some sort of dejagging or antialiasing on the raw bitmap, upstream of the actual edge detector.

Either that or something else.

[George M. Perzel]

Inlay Portraits/Silhouettes
<hr style="color: rgb(209, 209, 225);" size="1"> <!-- / icon and title --> <!-- message --> Hi Barbara;(Posted on Wrong Thread)
I'm sure that you know there's more than one way to skin a cat-here's a fairly simple method which may give you something close to what you want, provided you have Photoshop (or similar program):
1.Original picture, cropped and level adjusted (Pic1)
2. Open pic in Photoshop- go to Filter-Artistic-Cutout, play with levels until you get image you like and save as bmp.(Pic2)
3. Open Pic2 in Corel Trace- trace in Outline mode around 60%- save trace result (Pic3)
4. Import Pic3 in Corel Draw-change to wireline view and clean up.(Pic4)
5. To get silhouette-change image in Corel Trace to Black and White and then outline trace. (Pic5)

Each of these steps has many possible variations that you can play around with. Step 2 allows you to change the number of output levels (colors)-more colors, more details (more types of veneer used for inlay).

Have Fun!!
George

[Lee DeRaud]

Each of these steps has many possible variations that you can play around with. Step 2 allows you to change the number of output levels (colors)-more colors, more details (more types of veneer used for inlay).

Yup. Step 2 is really the key to the process, and the devil is in the details. Some pictures will fall right out, no problem, but others will go from having way too much detail to even think about doing as marquetry, straight to being one big nondescript blob of each 'color'.

[Barbara Buhse]

Thanks George... right now I'm just using Microsoft Picture it. I just bought the new version and haven't installed it yet... the old version does not have very many filters, but your system seems to be just what I was looking for... I'm printing it now and hanging it on my bulletin board! After all this computer work, I hope I don't mess up the lasering part!

[Chuck Burke]

George,
Can the same thing be accomplished ins CorelPHOTOPAINT?

Chuck