My granddaughter is here, her dad is in the army stationed in Poland, she is wanting to send a nightlight to him of herself and her mom, I don’t have the software or the knowhow, to edit the photo to engrave to where it looks like them and not a pixely blob. Can someone help me with it? Thank you so much, Donna
If you can, I would try for another photo. A bright sun high contrast photo with a black outfit and sunshade glasses, and a busy if fuzzy background are each and all big challenges to get on an engraving like a photo and many times more so to be an engraved nightlight.
The ideal would be to get a 3d image as some smart phones are capable of. Those measure distance rather than light which is exactly what the engraving needs where the closest bit is almost white and the cutoff almost black. (carving from the back the shades are inverted) Otherwise, dark clothes, and shaded parts of faces are cut deep even if close and white not cut even if far.
Short of 3d image, it needs to be simple, an preferably a bright but clouded day so everything is evenly shaded. Tha way deep things are darker than when facing the camera so a solid colored t-shirt for example would show a great variety of shades where a striped one would look carved out at the darker stripes.
If I had to use that image, I would use hd photo for engrave but check the maximum black to 75 so there is at least some space betwee the dots. Using Gimp, I would outline just the people and delete the background, but you still might have a pretty rough result.
2 Likes
That is a great job!
However, engraved into the back side it needs to be inverted, and the background be nothing, and that means an svg is required in order to include the offset outline. (Trudy’s is in the svg also if needed or can be put on ignore)
Family.zip (462.4 KB)
5 Likes
and now engrave that into something that has very little visible grain. Basswood and Baltic Birch both qualify.
The best version I’ve seen are to do two passes, Both using the SD Engrave setting, one as Vary Power, and one as a Convert to Dots.
1 Like
For that, you need to engrave the negative of the design in clear (or nearly clear like “green glass”) material, so it ends up on the back. I left the bottom of the outline open so you can add the shape you need to fit the nightlight.
1 Like
Thank you so so much for all your help, she is going to love this, and thank you so much for your advice, I am clueless on pictures. thank you thank you
2 Likes
@deirdrebeth did the hard work. I just flipped it so it could be engraved in the back. And I just now added a couple of tweaks to also mirror it.
At the bottom, what I cannot know is the size and depth of the slot. For that, you need to look and measure the part and make a few rectangles on either side to chew off the excess so the image sits even with the top of the light and centered.
Also please post photos here of the finished piece 
Please use this piece with the fixes instead of the one above…
Family.zip (456.1 KB)
4 Likes
@trually did the hard work 
5 Likes
Photoshop removed the background and Lightroom did the rest.
7 Likes
sorry
1 Like
No sorry needed!
2 Likes
Geez I always feel like I don’t know a think when you all get going on some of this stuff. 
2 Likes
How I feel when folks discuss electronics.
3 Likes
well that I understand. it is the Photo editing that leaves me in the dust. LOL
4 Likes
I have been doing graphics since 1988 (AutoCAD 9, Corel3, and several extinct species) as for electronics I will let you know when I have accomplished something.
3 Likes
I need to familiarize myself with these programs. Thank you everyone for your help. This grandma appreciates it
2 Likes
Lightroom is the most awesome tool, in my opinion.
I find it easy to use and learn and you can easily apply what you did to any other photo in seconds. When I was doing photography with my DSLR, it was like magic. (Compared to how long it took me to use Photoshop, especially.)
I haven’t been using Lightroom much lately, but once I used it the other day, I remembered how much I love it. I need to get my catalog back in there and use it again.
5 Likes
The thing for me is that I get the adobe cloud through work. so it is tough to pass up free.
3 Likes
nice! And you can use it at home, too? So you can use Lightroom for free!
I started messing with my LR catalog. (I have over 90K photos from before Addie was born, ugh LOL I haven’t added photos for so long.) It’s going to take forever to get everything organized. So I’ll just have to do a baby step at a time. Got LR classic going on my computer, imported the catalog. Don’t think I want to migrate to LR cloud. But it sounds like there is a way to use both, so I’ll have to work on that later.
5 Likes