I have searched the forum in multiple ways. I watched tutorials I found in the community. Everything seems to say there is a “step” where it lets me put cutlines, but I am not seeing it. I even see where there is an icon on the left side of the app in one tutorial specifically named cutline, but I do not have that.
How do I add my own cutline (square or circle, etc) to an image I scan in?
Additional question, how can I add a cutline in Fireworks or Photoshop or Illustrator before I import the image? It has to be simple, but finding how to do it has not been.
You need to use a vector drawing program like Illustrator to create the cutline (square or circle or whatever) first.
Then you save that file as an SVG. Once it is created, you can drag and drop the file onto the artboard in the Glowforge interface and there it is!
Since you mentioned using Illustrator, I’m going to point you towards some short tutorials.
These will get you up to speed quickly:
Then if you want to get started designing your own stuff quickly, the Matrix has a lot of tutorials and video links showing the best of the tips and tricks:
For using the Glowforge:
For Using Photoshop, GIMP and Paintshop:
For using Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDRAW and Affinity Designer:
For using Fusion 360, OnShape, Openscad, Rhino, etc.
Here is an SVG of different shapes. You can upload them in the add artwork button once you get to the operations space of the GFUI. Delete what you don’t want.
And, to round things up, you can use the auto trace function of the Glowforge itself to generate a cut line. Just put your printed image in the bed of the Glowforge, click on Trace, and after the preview shows up, drag a square around the image and click just outside the image. When you Place Artwork and go back to the home page you should see on the left side a cut operation and an engrave operation. You can set the engrave operation to Ignore and use the Cut to cut out your image. (Note that if you are trying to cut around the same item you just traced, you should do it right under the camera and it might still be a bit out of alignment. You can try this process to tweak the image placement if necessary).
