Image Paint Software

[Scott Shepherd]

Anyone else checked out the new advertiser, Image Paint Software? Their website has some absolutely gorgeous inlays. It says it works for the lasers as well as CNC. We don't do any colorful things like that for our inlay work, but that's really some beautiful work. If I did inlay work more often, I'd be taking that software for a test drive.

Check it out.....

http://www.amazoncanvas.com

[Bert Kemp]

I did a quick look says you need AI which I don't have. Also was wondering how you print the wood texture designs on the veneer? Suppose I have to read more LOL

[gary l roberts]

Saw the software work at AWFS. It's a pug in on AI. I believe it will work on any vrs so an old copy should not cost you much. He seemed to solve all or at least most of the issues you might have doing marquetry. It automates the issues of reducing size by beam size, cleaning up vectors, veneer selection based on color and shading etc.
It appears to be a first class solution in making marquetry user friendly especially with a laser which he used to do the cut demos at the show.

[Mike Null]

That's impressive and the kind of thing I would like to do. I don't have Illustrator though.

[Steve Morris]

Do look great but it states "Some images shown above represents the actual physical artworks, while others represent the finished designs still in digital format"
Does make you wonder just how good it really is compared to the advertising, raises trust issues for me when they present false pics like that with the intent of taking my money.

[Scott Shepherd]

I don't know Steve, I think that hummingbird on the front page looks pretty amazing on that wooden box. If you watch the video, you can see it made. That's a pretty good snapshot of how close to the image the final product turned out to me.

I'd love to see an actual gallery of completed and customers works on their site. That's really beautiful stuff.

[Steve Morris]

Yep got to agree would be great to see the real McCoy from users.

[Rob Damon]

The impression I got was this does not produce any final product.

You scan in actual wood veneer samples or use theirs in order to make the picture in the digital world so you can see "as close to live" as possible what your final picture will look like. That file is then used as a cut list/pathway for when you put the real veneer on your laser/cnc and create the actual cut parts.

It does not actually "paint" anything on the final product, but rather acts as a go between, between a paint program and the code to cut real veneer.

That's my take.

[Scott Shepherd]

Exactly Rob, that's what it does. It takes graphics and creates the cut files, which is a huge hurtle when trying to do something like that. I would suspect as intricate as it is, it wouldn't take much to pay for the software pretty quickly. I don't recall seeing anything that intricate posted in all the years I've been here.

They do have a free wood image download that's huge. The names are weird, but there's an excel file that explains the codes. Really great stuff there.

[Dan Hintz]

The impression I got was this does not produce any final product.

You scan in actual wood veneer samples or use theirs in order to make the picture in the digital world so you can see "as close to live" as possible what your final picture will look like. That file is then used as a cut list/pathway for when you put the real veneer on your laser/cnc and create the actual cut parts.

It does not actually "paint" anything on the final product, but rather acts as a go between, between a paint program and the code to cut real veneer.

That's the beauty of this product. If you scan in the actual piece of veneer you plan to use, you can twist/tweak the cutout line to match up with the grain as you see fit. Once you've put together an entire project, you know that what you wind up with in the real world will be awfully close to what was on the screen.

I like it... just wish I had the time to play with it.

[Roy Nielsen]

It is possible to play with the demo version on top of a demo version of AI.

I tried it out for a few hours one evening, was really fighting to figure out AI, but ImagePaint was fairly intuitive and fast for at least pattern filling. The pattern filling is essentially the same outcome as using Pattern Fill in Corel Draw, just a whole lot easier and more flexible in that you can lay out your object to get an exact spot from your veneer, such as a highly figured area; that's assuming that you properly scanned/photographed the piece. This would allow tweaking your design so much easier for either one off pieces, to set exactly what you want, or using "stock" photos if you're not concerned with getting exact pieces/do several copies of the same design/etc. but want to experiment with different species.

I didn't quite figure out how to retrieve the items to actually cut (AI newby problems).

[Kev Williams]

That software is pretty cool..

One thing I didn't find on the website is info on the transformation from photo to line art. I would be interested in the software simply for that purpose. But like many others, I don't have AI.

[Scott Shepherd]

I emailed them and got a reply back last night from one of the creators of the software. He said that he's out of the country at the moment and the site is blocked from that country, but when he gets back home, he'll answer questions about it. He said it was just released this spring. He gave me a link to a site that had some final photos of the work, but it's a site with a lot of Artists pieces and it's hard to navigate and I wasn't able to locate them very easily. He said there are a dozen or so real life images on that site, so there are some photos around.

I look forward to seeing them when he gets back.

Seemed like a really nice guy and glad to help.

[Doug Griffith]

That software is pretty cool..

One thing I didn't find on the website is info on the transformation from photo to line art. I would be interested in the software simply for that purpose. But like many others, I don't have AI.

That information is detailed on the Production Pro page. It has some well thought out features. It even compensates for the kerf.

[Kev Williams]

The info I found isn't exactly what I'm talking about-

I'll copy & paste, website info in blue:

...The Toolpath Generator takes a finished digital design and automatically converts all shapes in the design to toolpaths. With a single mouse click, all shapes on a selected sheet of material are duplicated and converted to toolpaths.

"a finished digital design"... The way that sentence is phrase makes it sound like the 'finished digital design' was created somewhere else...

There's 3 images used of the little girl: The photo, the toolpath, and the finished wood-art...



--what I want to know is, did this program take the photo "as is" and convert it to toolpaths? Or was something needed to be done to the photo first? There's a LOT of detail in the photo missing from the toolpaths. Which is exactly what interests me! If this program did this, then great! But if the photo had to be "worked over" first, I'd also like to know how that was done...

Example: ever scan a photo of say, a brick building, and hope whatever trace/vectorization program you use can change it into useable toolpath art? Most results contain way too much detail because of outlining everything black, and centerline trace results usually resemble a rock puzzle that barely resembles the original subject. I really like how that toolpath of the girl left a lot of unneeded detail behind, yet the detail that IS there is still quite detailed. That would be really handy to me!