Wanting to make a 3' x 5' laser engraved mural

[bryan henderson]

I know that there has been multiple postings on this topic and I think Onur is the pro at it thru SMC. I would like to get a picture of Sydney Crosby scoring the wining goal for Canada at the 2010 Olympics and engrave onto sya marble or granite to a size of 3' x 5' using 12" square tiles. If anyone can help me out with this in any that would be greatly appreciated. I am looking to mount this onto my rec room wall once completed.

[Mike Null]

Bryan

I do not do this sort of thing but the process you want is called tiling and it is in CorelDraw.

Import your bitmap into Corel then click on print then examine the options from there or search out a tutorial on tiling on the internet.

[Joe De Medeiros]

I have done a few now, not quite that large. The key is to size your art work to the 3' x 5' then offsetting your artwork by the number off tiles your machine holds, in my case that's 2 tiles, so I offset 2' on the next 2 tiles, and so on. Your actual offset will be determined by the actual size of your tiles ( some are not really 12" x 12").

here is a section of a set I was doing.
tiles.jpg

good luck and post some pictures

[Joe De Medeiros]

Mike, I find I have more control doing it manually because of the variance in the tiles.

[Dan Hintz]

To add to Mike and Joe's posts... you need to consider if the tiles will be installed with or without grout lines and if it will be viewed up close or from a distance. If you have grout lines, it often makes the image more visually appealing if you remove the grout line thickness from the image. In other words, imagine the grout lines like a window frame that is placed over the image... wherever a grout line lies, the image is not engraved. If you engrave every bit of the image and don't take the grout line into account, the image can appear distorted, especially from a distance.

[Scott Shepherd]

I think the problem is going to be getting a photograph, especially one you didn't take yourself, in the resolution you need for that.

250 dpi at 5' is one heck of a large photo to start with.

[Dan Hintz]

I think the problem is going to be getting a photograph, especially one you didn't take yourself, in the resolution you need for that.

Awww, come on, Steve... that's only a mere 135MP image GigaPan does 45MP images all of the time At 125dpi, you're well within GigaPan range...

On a more serious note... while you won't get that level of detail from a standard digicam, if you have a high-MP image already (15-20MP) you can use some good-quality fractal software to increase the res enough for an easy 125dpi... and possibly even a 250dpi engraving without too much ugliness appearing. If you're starting with a few-MP image, expect ugliness.

[Scott Shepherd]

Yeah, I left my 135MP camera on the buss this morning...........I won't do that again....

From the initial post, it sounded like he wants to use an existing image from the internet. I don't see that happening, with or without fractals.

I'd think you'd need to start with a 20MP photo and use fractals to go up from there, but I've not used that, and I don't have a 20MP camera, so I'm only guessing that would get you there.

If you want to look at it from a distance, it'll work, but close up, I don't think it's going to work.