Greetings Glowforge owners! This is my first post, but I’ve been reading almost all of the posts on this forum since I got my spot in line back in October. I haven’t seen anyone ask this particular question and I’m hoping that @dan or a staff member can answer.
I was wondering if the software will be able to scan a hand drawn image and then select one part of it, either to modify, print only a section, delete, or replace with something else. It would make sense to me that only a portion of the image can be selected to either get lasered, or saved for duplicates. That would also allow for multiple passes to “build” the new image that you might want.
I’m building a growth chart for my daughter and I’m intentionally making the pieces less than the 12x20 bed size. I will initially be hand drawing the measurements, birthday height, and little notes. I would potentially like to take a picture of the 12" x 12" tile, change part of it to look crisper, and then sand off the “changed” part.
Would the GF be able to trace over certain pieces, and then add the Font/Picture/Item to the piece at the same time, or would that need to be done in two passes? First pass with the trace function, and then second pass with adding the computer generated part of the image?
I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do that. From what I understand about the process, when the Glowforge scans a drawing, it gets pushed to the cloud software, and from there (or any image editing software) you have the opportunity to edit it. You should also be able create whatever text or image you want and overlay it directly on top of the the scan in the Glowforge software.
If I understand what you’re getting at (and that is a big if), you would need to do the kind of editing you describe in your own software. From what little we’ve seen and heard of the glowforge’s software it can resize and place, but full-blown, or even quarter-blown, editing is for the user in their software package(s) of choice.
I think I’m trying to ask about the abilities of the software to combine various “techniques” together. If I use my own program to create text or image, and I use the GF to snap a picture of my hand drawn piece, how can I combine them?
Do I have to export the picture to my software (editing a photograph at that point) and add my computer made pieces, or can I add my computer made pieces onto the photograph in the GF software? What level of sophistication does the GF software have? Is it a low level editor? Or perhaps it is a high level print preview?
From what you say, the software is more like a print preview and no cropping, image selection, or insert abilities?
This question will end up branching out into a number of other areas. For instance, if I were to have 4 different drawings on a piece of paper and I only want to engrave/cut 1 of them, is that possible using only the GF software? Or for ANY editing, it would have to be exported, edited and then sent to the GF for engraving. This can introduce artifacts in the design as it is saved in potentially multiple different formats multiple times.
I’m making an assumption that the image from the camera in the GF will be treated as an image (JPG, BMP, etc…) and our Computer made designs are going to be a VERY different format.
I’m not sure I understand your use case, but it’s easy to combine things by simply running the laser a second time over them when they’re half done. As low-fi as that sounds, it’s a great technique for stacking files created in different software (e.g. a hand drawn picture on top of an illustrator-designed shape).
Beyond that, if you want to combine them in a more sophisticated manner, you want to use a flatbed scanner or high quality camera to capture the art, then bring it in to your design file and integrate it there.