Best software for converting a photo to grayscale height map for Relief engravings

[cynd11]

I think the term you need to search for is depth map. There are a few tutorials on the forum about it. Here’s one I wrote about making lithophanes, which is similar to what you are asking for:

How I made my lithophane

Here’s a rough step by step process of how I did the lithophane of a night-blooming cereus. (I used the process described in this Instructable to get the .stl file.) Start with a photo with good contrast. I used this one: [Night%20blooming%20cereus] Go to this website: http://3dp.rocks/lithophane/. Settings as follows: Image settings–Positive Image; Model Settings–I went with the defaults. Upload your image. It will look like this:[ImageToLithophane] Download the .stl file. Open…