Before I press the button, I’d love to have some input on what’s going on:
I uploaded a pdf image to etch–only minor revisions from artwork I did on a test piece last night. But now I am seeing parallel rows of dots (same fuschia color as the artwork) that are about 1/8" apart and close to the “block” for this image for sizing/position. These dots are not in my file, and I’ve never had such parallel lines as “artifacts” before in any files I’ve uploaded.
(sorry about the sun glare on the screen, but most dots should show up).
So it is an alignment aid intended to help me line up the artwork with an edge or reference line in my material? Or an artwork artifact?
I prefer getting an answer or other head scratches before I either run another test piece–but I’m set up to run the finished item (which is for an order), but don’t want to risk getting these on my actual piece.
I’ll bet anything it’s an artifact in the file. That can happen if an image has had a white background removed…sometimes there are a few dots left at the edges, and if the background didn’t start out as perfect white, they are going to show, and print.
I’d erase them in something like Photoshop, or just crop them out.
Thanks @Jules, I have to agree–the way the customer sent me the file as a picture within a word doc and somehow she made the “frame” disappear", but it’s there–so now doing some clean up work via photoshop (or I hope that works)!
I believe you’re on the right track that this is an artwork artifact. The dots are likely to show up in the final piece as long as they’re showing up in the Glowforge app workspace. There have been no software updates that include something like this as a feature, and I’ve not encountered this as a bug before, so I’d need to look at the file itself to be absolutely sure what you’re running into.
Please let me know if your clean-up work in Photoshop yields better results, and feel free to send the file over if you’d like us to take a look!
Thanks Vee,
Reworking the tree image in Photoshop did get rid of the row of dots! (Know now pictures in word not the way accept artwork). Had a few other artifacts, but masking the leather made sure they didn’t show up on the leather itself.
Pretty much always true.
I had somebody send me their logo that way and it was really horrible. So bad I couldn’t believe they sent it to me. I mean, it was visually full of artifacts. I had to politely say “Really nice logo. It’ll look great engraved. But can you send me the original artwork for this?” They, of course, didn’t know the difference.
At least they had a file, though & not a napkin sketch
But oddly using the image the first time for a test it didn’t have the artifacts. But it’s Word, saving as pdf & lucky I guess more didn’t go awry!
I have had the problem on many occasions but found them and got rid of them before leaving Gimp much less Inkscape which can have similar sub pixel issues to track down.
I’m glad to hear that took care of it! I’ll go ahead and close this thread - as always, please start a new thread if you run into any other trouble. Happy printing!
