need help from someone that has knowledge as a Photographer

[Devon Jones]

well i seem to have everything good but the image. i dont know what works in all of my ps options to edit a image. can anyone help me by telling me what they use and why they use it. if sky and water look bad what they use. how to get more detail out of an image when trying to engrave on mirror and wood. thanks here is the best mirror i have done so far and i cant seem to get it again although the image was easy and very little editing was done just dithering options on epilog driver

[Martin Boekers]

Devon, there is sooo much to Photoshop that to try to explain quickly and easily how to correct an image to make the best engraving is a difficult proposition.

You have CS3 which is good it has so many different ways to work with images.

If you open an image and its color to start with, go to image. mode. and make sure you are in RGB, then go to image. adjustments. black and white this gives you great control over the individual color levels. Shadow and highlight adjust ment is another quick fix with out a lot of dodging ,burning and masking.

After to get what you like go to mode and select greyscale

Make sure you do this on a duplicate file NEVER work with an orginal!

I have worked with Photoshop for 10+ years and I'm always finding new techniques and ideas on the internet.

One thing I would also recommend s if you get an image that burns great for you save a copy in a folder and label it good images etched to mirror.

Ater you start to get a handfull of images that look good study them. See what characteristics they share, check similarities in their histograms.

Then you have a benchmark to correct your other images with.

Just a handfull of thoughts hope it helps!

Marty


There are many FREE (I love that word free!) tutorials and actions available to make all sorts of adjustments to your image spend a fare amount of time researching and going through the tutorials available on the internet.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

I would also add. Experiment, Experiment, Experiment.

You can print directly from Photoshop. Its printer interface is great for setup.

Not all photos are good for engraving. Get yourself some painted white board and experiment. Its great for finding out how to dither and what kind of detail you can expect.

Photos with high contrast will work well but photos that have subtle shades are very difficult if not impossible.

[Devon Jones]

thank you, i have prob went through about 20 mirrors all different pics edited different ways and only a few come out the way i want them to. but i will not stop try'n. i love tuts but i cant find any helping me laswer wise. i can only find corel and ps ones that do things that i dont need as far as lasers go. again thank you and i will keep try'n

[Larry Bratton]

Devon;
One thing, first of all you need to have an image that is 300dpi, especially if your going to use Photograv. Images that are downloaded off the internet and such at low resolution like 72dpi are just not good images for engraving, Photoshop or no. You can try and "res" them up but your really not accomplishing much. The old adage "garbage in, garbage out" applies here. Good luck.