Colorvideo

[dsdiehl]

I thought I saw a video on color use in the listings but cannot find now.Any ideas?

[primal_healer]

Not sure what you mean by color use? Are you talking about breaking a design into steps by using different colors?

[eflyguy]

The Glowforge will group print operations by path color, so if you want all your cuts grouped together, make all of the paths the same color, same for scores, etc. If you want to stagger operations, such as cutting all of the inner pieces before an outline, then make the outline a separate color.

[G-BOB]

I’m learning as well so if you are looking for the color palette to cut in sequence, Pauseibilities said to search “glowforge color palette”.

[wenning08]

How to use colors in your Glowforge files to speed up engravings

[evansd2]

Might be useful:

Inkscape custom palette generator

So the key to a good GF palette is that your colors must be pretty different from each other, and in ascending hex code order. The colors being different from each other helps you differentiate between them at a glance, the hex codes in ascending order is for the GFUI, it sorts colors from low hex value to high. I built a page that generates a ton of colors and presents them in order, allowing you to click and select colors and fine tune your options to ensure good contrast. To use it, downlo…

[henryhbk]

@Inkscape custom palette generator Everything Else

So the key to a good GF palette is that your colors must be pretty different form each other, and in ascending hex code order

Not sure what “pretty different” to each other means as a hex number. You can’t get more different than 2 different numbers (kind of the definition of different). So 2 colors, even if only by 1-bit is as different to a computer than all 32 bits being different. (and before someone snarkily comments it’s only 24-bits, I always count alpha…). As for the colors being in order. well only if you want the GFUI to default to a specific order. Since you can drag/reorder at will I never care and simply manually realign rather than take the time to load a custom pallet…

[caribis2]

@henryhbk

Not sure what “pretty different” to each other means as a hex number. You can’t get more different than 2 different numbers (kind of the definition of different). So 2 colors, even if only by 1-bit is as different to a computer than all 32 bits being different.

IDK how old that post is, but when I first received my unit in 2017 I tried upping the hex number by one and the GFUI treated the two colors as the same. I just retried it a few months ago, after being told I was wrong, and it worked.

[evansd2]

@henryhbk

Not sure what “pretty different” to each other means as a hex number.

So, I put that different bit in there because to me ideally I’d be able to see the colors as different. I can’t differentiate between #000000 and #000001, but yes, you’re right, the computer can. I’ll update the guide.

@henryhbk

As for the colors being in order. well only if you want the GFUI to default to a specific order. Since you can drag/reorder at will I never care

I almost always have cuts inside other cuts or engraves on cut pieces. As a rule, it is better practice to have inside cuts done first – material can shift or warp after a cut, leading to poor alignment or poor focus. In the worst case, that could potentially even be a fire risk.

If you have two or three tasks in the job, manual arrangement works well. But if you’re dealing with larger designs with more complicated operations, rearranging to get in the correct order is error-prone.

@henryhbk

rather than take the time to load a custom pallet

As for the time it takes… you drop that palette in the Inkscape folder and then set it as your default, and you never have to deal with it again. It’s not a large time suck by any stretch, perhaps 5 minutes of time now and you’re all set to use your palette to order your ops.

[eflyguy]

@evansd2

drop that palette in the Inkscape folder and then set it as your default

This. Then shift-click each object to set stroke color in desired sequence.