Photo Laser Contest - Winner

[Bill Cunningham]

Ok.. I dug through my photo folder and found this fellow.. Seeing that everyone blames him/her/it for the never arriving spring for us folk in the north, I figured he'd hang around on this piece of glass until hunting season opens.
OK, here's the info....This was reverse etched into a piece of 5"x7"x3mm sheet glass.. The machine used is a 35-45 watt Epilog 24TT and the settings may seem strange and excessive to a lot of you, but they work for the process and technique I developed for my use on glass..The photo was taken with a Nikon P510 and cropped/tweaked/etc. with photopaint, then processed with photograv(the old one) using the general glass setting. It was etched into the glass using 600 dpi, 100% power and 15% speed. This was just done today, and glass being hard to photograph, I just propped it up on a box against a Dark Green Wall and tried to stay out of the glass reflection.

Wiarton Willy is White, so this must be one of the other liars..

[Jerry Honkanen]

Attachment 284251

I'm not sure if this is expectable for the contest and I don't know if I am doing this right. I just finished this for a memorial for a friends Father and thought I would enter it. If this is not what I am suppose to do please inform me and I will enter something else. My laser is home made and with the Mach3 operating system, 3 X 5 foot table. I use BobCad Cam, PEP4 and Paint Shop Pro X5. My CO2 laser is 40 Watts and the laser tube is from Rabbit Laser. The stepper motors are 480 OZ. from Wantimotor - China. The 3D router work was done on a homemade CNC router also Mach3 Steppers 1200 OZ also Wantimotor 4 X 8 foot table. This is a YouTube of my laser while it was being built http://youtu.be/6Dfjw7xRCnY and one of it in operation http://youtu.be/jVSwug2LyK8 I hope I did this right. Please let me know?
I can't get the picture thing to work right.
Jerry Honkanen

[Bert Kemp]

Photo of my Grand Daughter taken last year just after her graduation.
Full Spectrum Laser 4th Gen. 40watt C02 Laser
on 8x8 Mirror reverse etch at 100%Power 10% speed at 500 dpi, I place it in a window to back light it, it was very bright outside, might have washed a little.
Attachment 284320

[Kev Williams]

Here's my submission, "The Abyss"-- it's a photo of (part of) my engraving shop! This is what 45 years of working in your basement can turn into if you're not careful! I couldn't think of a better photo to use for this contest than where I made it!

I took the original photo just this morning. I was contemplating submitting a photo of our boats in the harbor, but a few customers really liked this one, so that's the one I'm entering! Here is a link to the full-size photo (on my domain server, it's safe!), all others are below--

www.engraver1.com/pictures/TheAbyss.jpg

The material I used is non-laserable Rowmark black/white/black 3-ply microthin matte 1/8" thick-- I've had this piece kicking around ever since I bought my ULS about 13 years ago, haven't needed it- till now!

Camera's- original pic by my old Sony F-707 @ 3 mplxs... The fixing I did to the pic was make it grayscale, put it in Corel Paint Shop Pro XI, hit "Clarifiy", copied and pasted it into Corel X4, resized it to about 10" x 7" tall, then guessed at the engraving settings--

Machine, my 10 year old LS900, still on the original 40w tube.

Settings, I just used the NH driver's "photo" mode. I ran one pass at 40 power and 60 speed, LPI/PPI both 600, it was a bit dark so I ran a second pass at 50 power and 80 speed, LPI/PPI at 500.

Camera that took the pic of the pic, my Sony A330 DSLR. Adjustments to that pic, I darkened it up a snick as ambient light grayed the black a bit...

I ran one of these pics on Rowmark LaserMax, but I think this turned out much better IMO, very little visible dithering, looks more like a real photo. The medium grays suffered a bit due to the material, and it's on the 'sepia' side, but otherwise I can't complain!

Be sure to check the full-size pic!

Attachment 284595Attachment 284596Attachment 284597

[Hannu Rinne]

Hi all,

Here is my participation in the competition. This work includes two layers – first layer is made on POM (Polyacetal) and the second is clear acrylic (cast). Acrylic is engraved from the back side and rubbed with black acryl paint. POM is engraved on the top of the sheet and also rubbed with black acryl paint. The base of the work is some exotic wood (I don’t know what…). The original photo (as well all of those) has taken with Canon EOS 500D – please, excuse my photography skill (I don’t have such a thing ). The engraving settings on the acrylic: 300DPI, speed 100 and power 45. The setting on POM: 300DPI, speed 80 and the power is 90. Made with the GCC Spirit GX 60W. The diameter of the engraving work is 197 mm. I ran the photo through Photo-Paint and Photograv before engraving. The picture is a part of my home town in Finland, the “Old Rauma” - established 1442, one of Unesco world heritage site.

And as always, I’m sorry for my English.

Best regards,
Hannu

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

The image is a photo I took of our barn cat using a very old Olympus digital camera. I selected the photo because of the multiple shades of gray, multiple shades of white, and all those whiskers to make it a bit more challenging for myself.

The photo was edited in PaintShop Pro X4. I cloned out the missing red pixels and adjusted the purple tinge caused by the ancient camera; added a mask layer (to fade the background edges); and tweaked here and there with all sorts of options to dim the background and enhance the cat in the foreground. The image was then converted to grayscale and resized to about 5" x 3.5".

I used my old PhotoGrav with Cherry setting. I then did what they say not to do. I opened the PhotoGrav file in PaintShop, made a few edits and then increased the image in size because I decided to do a larger engraving.

The file was engraved using an Epilog Mini 45-watt on a 9" x 6.5" piece of alder at 90 speed, 60 power, 600 DPI. I then added a light layer of black powdercoat paint and engraved at 100 speed, 10 power, 600 DPI.

[Keith Upton]

First let me say thanks to everyone involved in making this contest happen. Engraving photos was never really on my list of things to do since it falls outside of my product line. But this contest gave me the excuse and motivation for giving it a try. So regardless of the outcome for me, it has been well worth the time and effort. I'm pretty happy with my first attempts at engraving a photo...

Laser: 60w Epilog Mini 24
Settings: 600dpi, 100 Speed, 50 Power, Stucki dithering mode, 1.5 inch lens.
Material: White 3mm MDF from Michael Kowalczyk.
Original Photo: Taken by my self using a Canon 1D Mark II, 16-35mm f2.8L USM lens, AlienBees lighting.
Photo Editing: Manually edited in Photoshop CS 5. Adjusted to black and white, then adjusted levels to achieve desired contrast.

Attachment 284986

A high resolution image of the engraving can be seen here.

[Vaughan Raymond]

Attachment 284991


Here is my entry. I've been collecting driftwood and doing photos on them. It lasers a nice brown color.

[seaver dave]

Contest Submittal

Contest Entry submittal

I have attached a engraved photo of my 3 grand kids. The picture was taken with a 20D Canon 35mm digital camera. It was engraved on a 1/8" masonite white board. The engraving measures 8 1/2" by 6 1/2". It was engraved on an Epilog mini 24" by 12" --35 watt engraver at 45 speed, 90 power 600 DPI and used the stucki ditthering . I processed the photo using photo grav 3.

I really enjoyed this contest--did some experimenting and learned alot. This was a great learning and sharing experience. Hope some similar projects and activities will occur in the future.

Dave Seaver



Attachment 285018

[Ron Fairbanks]

Photo was taken Sunday March 16th 2014, in the foothills East of Fresno California by me, using my iphone 4 with no filters.
Corel Draw X4 software was used exclusively applying the "Gold Method" to get the proper digital image.
Engraved on a Dollar Tree mirrored coaster using the Epilog Mini 24 40 watt laser at 25 speed and 100 power single pass and back painted black after engraving.
Attachment 285026

[Keith Outten]

These are the ten contestants selected for the Laser Engraved Photo Contest.

Please vote for your favorite entry, the winner will receive a GoPro Black edition video camera.

Good luck to all!

[Bert Kemp]

Well although no one has officially declared the photo engraving contest over, the rules stated the 28th of March Voting would end . So on that note Let me be the first to Congratulate!

Kev Williams on an awesome job of engraving his shop
Way to Go Kev.
If I jumped the gun here please forgive me.

[Keith Outten]

This contest ended automatically when the poll closed.
Kev Williams is the winner per the number of votes recorded.

Kev, send me a PM with your shipping address and I will get your prize in the mail ASAP.

Congratulations to Kev and to everyone who participated.
.

[Mary Lee]

Hi , I like your works！What a nice job on this cat !
Ms.Mary