Have been engraving images off internet just trying to figure the gf out. Some images that I upload from my photos come out with little dots lasered in all over the place, don’t understand why that happens.
If you zoom in close on those pics before you run them you will probably see those artifacts. It is good practice to clean up your pics in a photo editing software before trying to engrave them.
3 Likes
Often times, images saved for the internet will be at a very low quality setting (smaller file, faster download, conserve resources, etc.). The low quality setting will leave what were images with white backgrounds as images with white backgrounds that now have splotches of almost white, but not quite white, in them. Anything not pure white will be picked up by the laser.
2 Likes
Well, I figured out if I go to sd settings it cleans the dots up but it does not engrave well on sad settings on ceramic tile. I have found it engraves decently on graphic but not the way I want. Running 600 speed, vary power, and tried 196-225 and 340 dpi. Getting close to what I want. Wonder if I need to slow speed down and lower dpi, not sure, only had it a couple of weeks and trying to figure it out. Thanks for taking the time to read and reply.
It’s really the images you’re using. Internet images are extremely compressed, which is fine for viewing on a screen, but they are also generally pretty crappy, with lots of noise in the white backgrounds. The laser is powerful enough to pick up on those slight bits and will burn them for you. All it takes is a few pixels of slightly darker “white” and the laser will burn it.
Changing your settings isn’t really going to get rid of those, you can clean the image up in something like Photoshop or GIMP and get a much better result.
3 Likes
The dots you describe are compression artifacts that are common to JPEG encoded files. They work fine for full-color/greyscale images, but stand out like sore thumbs on simple (low color count) graphics like word art, logos, and illustrations.
Whenever possible, look for images in ‘lossless’ formats such as PNG, GIF, BMP, etc.
Once caveat – taking a ‘lossy’ JPG file and converting it to PNG (or any other format) will not automagically remove the offending artifacts. "Garbage in, garbage out."
4 Likes
Thanks for all of the reply’s, I am trying to work from my iPad and I cannot use a lot of the things you have described, any one know a program I can use on the iPad?
I know folks use Affinity Designer there - but I think that costs, let me dig
Photoshop
Graphic
Procreate
There are a lot of drawing apps on the iPad I guess!
You’ll also want a vector program like Inkpad or Vectornator
thanx all for your advice
This topic was automatically closed 32 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.