Why is it that if you upload a photo to engrave & the GF can read the proofgrade material it will engrave in one operation but if it cant read the QR code it loads the photo in as 8 different operations?..and is there a workaround or do I need to figure out speeds & settings for each layer of the photo of which in this case there are 8. Cheers.
…or have I made a mess of things?
This.
Kidding. The files should be interpreted exactly the same regardless of whether a Proofgrade material is detected.
Are you uploading a photo (JPG/PNG) or a SVG with raster images embedded into it?
LOL. 
@jbmanning5. I am a total noob so am playing around getting to know the tool and the software involved (Inkscape for now). It saves as an .SVG so does that mean it has a raster embedded? I have engraved a few things now so thought I was getting the hang of it. This was my first photo though. It turned out way darker that I wanted, so dark I can hardly make out what it is and I know what it is 
The photo was engraved in one operation & then it carried out some cuts on proofgrade material, but it cut through the QR code so next time it did not recognise it.
I edited another photo which had more contrast to start with but when I uploaded it the app requested 8 manual settings, I then re-loaded the previously engraved photo and it was now asking for 8 lots of manual settings?
SVG is good. And it should be embedded, so that’s good too.
Each photo will be interpreted as one operation. It sounds like you had just one photo.
As for the cuts, the Glowforge uses different stroke colors to determine different operations. So a blue stroke and a red stroke would both be interpreted as separate operations.
Did you by chance make the cuts different colors in Inkscape?
My working theory at the moment is that the first file and second file were the same (minus the editing in the picture). The first upload it identified it as Proofgrade so it assigned cuts to all of the different colors (but still different operations on the left).
On the second upload, it couldn’t auto-identify, so it left everything as manual and you noticed the many operations.
If you click on unidentified material/unknown on the top left, you can manually select a Proofgrade material.
That guess may be wrong though. If you want to zip the SVG and upload it, I bet we can get it figured out pretty quick.
Darby2.zip (632.9 KB)
Hmmmm…beginning to think its definitely something I’ve done.
I went back into the app and loaded the proofgrade medium maple ply & re-loaded the first photo and it still asked for 8 operations? I think the only thing I done different is to ask the app to ignore the cuts this time.
Attached is the photo that engraved the first time in one operation. Its a photo of my dog Darby who passed a few weeks ago.
EDIT: The cuts worked fine. They were a different colour from the engrave.
Ok, I see what happened. You used the trace function to trace your picture. I’m not terribly familiar with the Inkscape trace tool but I can see what happened. In the screenshot below, you can see the different paths that it actually made from the trace. Since each of these are separate, filled areas, it is identifying them as different jobs. I selected one of the layers just to Illustrate what’s on that particular layer.
I don’t know the best path forward for you… I would try to stay away from auto-tracing a photograph that you want to engrave. Using the original JPG will typically yield better results (for a photograph). The fidelity of any trace tool is going to leave you wanting - it can’t faithfully reproduce the millions of colors that a JPG file can reproduce.
Thanks very much for taking a look and trying to help out. There’s a steep learning curve ahead and I’m right at the bottom of it. I’ll check the Inkscape tutorials on photo to see if there is anything. I assumed that because the trace function worked so well for the graphics I had engraved it would be the same for the photo.
…still curious as to why the photo engraved the first time in one operation even thebthe trace had 8 layers and all subsequent times it split the photo into the layers.Thanks again.
My laptop is playing up with a Windows update so I’m done for tonight and I’m back to work(12hr shifts) tomorrow so done for a few days. I’ll try again then. Cheers.
Thank you. Very happy it came out as well as it did considering its the second time I have tried engraving a photo, I am sure as I learn it can only get better.
