Where to find artwork for engraving

[Eric Claiborne]

Dan, using camera tricks like using depth of field to highlight certain areas in focus or app effects like tilt shift can help get the point across without showing everything.
'Sneak peeks' of a project can highlight an interesting section and generate more interest in the processes completion.

[Dan Kozakewycz]

Dan, using camera tricks like using depth of field to highlight certain areas in focus or app effects like tilt shift can help get the point across without showing everything.
'Sneak peeks' of a project can highlight an interesting section and generate more interest in the processes completion.

Thanks Eric.

Here's an example image I posted on another thread here today, showing one of my pieces of work.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.n...f5913242ed0ad7

Is something like this too easy for someone to lift and edit into something they can use? To my mind, the angle and low resolution is protection enough, but I can never be 100% sure.

[Paul Phillips]

Mike and Dan, I think what Eric is getting at is that no matter how far you go to protect your original creation, someone can easily steal the concept or recreate the design, their not so much stealing the picture posted, water marked or not, their stealing the idea and concept. We had a customer walk in our showroom and look at our sample book of signs we've made, they said "oh I saw that sign in the other sign shops book"! (our biggest competitor) They are notorious for ripping off our designs, a note from our lawyer slowed that down.

[Jiten Patel]

We battle with this all the time. Fine line between showing your products in all their glory vs people stealing your artwork. We draw everything from scratch and have the images of the finished products available on our website in good resolution images purely because this sells our business.

We have had countless companies steal out designs. Mostly on places like Alibaba but have had Western companies based in the US do so to. A quick email with a ceast and decist usually does the trick. Ultimately, I take it as a compliment that my artwork is good enough to steal. There isn't much you can do about it really unless you want to get into length and costly legal battles. For example, I watched a TV show about copyright infringement and that featured Dyson (the vacuum company). A billion pound company has literally thousands and thousands of pending law-suits regarding this, but even they do not get very far. If they can't do it, most of us have no chance. But as mentioned before, most people who plagiarise are small companies/individuals who will pee themselves with a threat of legal action.

[daniel coyle]

Thanks for all the great responses. I both got some great advice on original question and learned a lot about how the world of online art, ownership and permission really works. The problem I seem to have from downloading from at least one site that has been suggested is that, after loading it into corel draw 12 and saving as an .ai file (which, for some reason, has been necessary for me to import successfully into laser cut 5.3) i get pixellated rastering. when i design IN laser cut 5.3 I don't get this pixellated effect. anyone know what i might be missing here?

[Martin Boekers]

Learn the trace function in Corel. If someone created they usually own it and would like to get paid for it. If you have Corel there is clip art included on the disc....

[Bert Kemp]

There are a lot of places out there were you can get free designs to use anyway you want. There's many places that sell designs but give some away free also. Plasmaspider is one I use a lot. It $20 annual membership and you can get a lot of neat signs and graphic's that are donated by members plus there is a vast variety for sale. I have bought packages for signs and artwork to use for lasering .

[daniel coyle]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I definitely learned a lot AND better understand any places where i might be unknowingly pilfering someone else's hard work. I was able to download some things that work but they come out "pixellated", not sure else how to describe it. The edges are not flush. Not noticeable from a distance though. Anyone have a sense of what could be causing this? I converted the files into the type that my software (lasercut 5.3) likes but...

Again, thanks for the great ideas and the heads up.

[Craig Matheny]

Reality nothing is safe on the web you post it someone will use it, you want your art safe two ways to do it first "Don't Post It" or secondly spend 35 bucks get it copyrighted and you can then have recourse for free basically to stop them from using it. We have had to peruse some people that tried to start coping our models from models they bought did not take long to stop them when you have a registered copyright. Just my 2 cents

[Dan Kozakewycz]

That's a raster file. JPG/GIF/PNG etc are all raster files.

The smooth files that scale infinitely without pixellating are vector files. EPS/AI/PDF/DWG are some vector file types.

[Henri Sallinen]

This is the curse of the modern age. Watermarks are not the way to go and there really isn't anything you can do about the ripping offs. I've followed a few original artists on instagram who've had their artwork stolen by other "artists" and even put up a public display claiming the work is their own. You can try to get these thiefs to pay for what they've stolen but I'm not sure if it's even possible without a big law suite etc. And if it's the Chinese who are doing the copying, then there really isn't anything you can do. If they are selling Apple / Samsung knok offs there without "getting caught" then I suspect getting a small artwork thief caught is really just a waste of time.

I myself am not that much of a original artist, but use vectors that I find on the web and edit them to suite my needs. I think I've got a pretty good feel about a website if it's distributing it's vector for free legitly or just sharing them without permittion.

Cutting it short: I think you don't stand a chance when it comes to protecting your artwork. You probably must show it off somewhere and you allways run the risk of getting copied!

[Brent Franker]

I've been doing graphic design type stuff for over 10 years. Nothing super fancy but still some original type stuff. Some of my ideas and designs I've seen show up on eBay. Like has been mentioned, you pretty much just take it as a compliment and see it as a sign of success and move on. You can protect your stuff so much that nobody sees it and thus nobody buys it or you can put it out there, have people like it and it gets popular, and because of this some end up copying it. I prefer that route rather than keeping it a secret and never selling anything Now, I do take certain steps when emailing proofs/designs to somebody in order to make it at least difficult or time consuming to copy it but about all I do is shrink the image down as to not make it a very desirable image to easily copy/trace as they'd have to totally create it from scratch. If I do an exact vector of something I may also distort it a little.

Bottom line, if somebody likes what you've done and are in the business as well they'll either copy it or do something similar. Best is to just smile and move on I think. Heck, pretty much every idea we all have likely comes from something we've already seen. Tattoos are talked about above so think of it this way... the first guy who did a tattoo of skin having the illusion of being peeled back could say that everyone after him is copying his idea! And, he probably got the idea from something else he saw. LOL

[daniel coyle]

Dan, if I find an image that is in jpg form from the internet is it possible to convert it to an AI file using corel draw and thus get rid of the pixellation. if so, i have not been successful with this yet.

[Steven Gray]

Search under "Royalty Free" images or "Royalty Free" art and you should come up with quite a bit of artwork.

[Dan Hintz]

Search under "Royalty Free" images or "Royalty Free" art and you should come up with quite a bit of artwork.

Be aware that "royalty free" does not always mean "free"... it simply means you do not have to pay royalties with each use/sale of the image. There may still be an initial, one-time(?) fee associated with use.