How to cut a photo printed on art paper adhered to adhesive backing?

[jayhandy7]

Hi! I have printed out a photo onto art paper then have placed that paper on one sided adhesive paper. The goal is to then peel the backing off of the adhesive paper…making a sticker of this figure. My question is, how do I make this cut?? I can’t seem to find the answer anywhere. Is it possible?

[evermorian]

If I am understanding correctly: you are wanting to cut around the outline of the printed figure.

If your camera is well-calibrated, you maybe able to get acceptable results doing it visually.

If it needs to be more accurate, you will likely have to use another approach, such as setting up a placement jig. I recently posted a video on aligning scores on two sides of a piece of stock. What you want to do would be similar and, you can likely figure it out from that.

Scoring Both Sides with Precision Alignment

I have had several people ask me about how to align score lines on the reverse of cards and other paper art pieces with the Glowforge. So, I made a video of one way to do it. This is essentially a basic jigging technique that can also work with other materials. [Laser-Scoring Both Sides of a Card with Precision Alignment]

[cynd11]

Also, do a forum search for Print and Cut—that is the technique you are looking for, and some folks have developed tip sheets on how to do it.

[hansepe]

And if you’d like some help, post your image and I’m sure one or more of us will dive in.

What software are you using to create for the Glowforge? Mac, PC, or other?

[jayhandy7]

Thank you and all for the help. I am using a Mac and Photoshop for the artwork.

[hansepe]

Cool. So do you have the entire Adobe Creative Suite or are you doing the photography bundle with Photoshop and Lightroom? If you have Illustrator there are more options.

Check out this tutorial.

Photoshop to Illustrator / Quick Outlines and Vectors of Photoshop Paths

The trace tool in Illustrator can be a great tool but sometimes you spend more finagling with getting a clean trace than you should. The following is a quick way to get easy outlines of objects (very useful for cutting). You can also use it to send any Photoshop path to Illustrator in a vector format - useful for things like the Symmetry Brush in this post. I want to trace a cut line of this walleye fish. I could use the Illustrator trace tool and delete the unneeded components. Or, I could spe…

Here are more tutorials by people on the forums; Look at the bottom of the post for “The Matrix”:

Community Glowforge Tutorials: Table of Contents

The Design Team Tutorial Project (aka “The Matrix”) This post and all related links are created and maintained by generous and helpful Glowforge customers. They have not been vetted or approved by Glowforge staff. List of Official Learning Tutorials from Glowforge: Safe Operations: Safety (Don’t be sorry later, read this now.) Operating Environment ( Don’t let your machine be uncomfortable.) Stop using your Glowforge unit if… Repairs to a Modified Glowforge Regulatory Information Des…

If you don’t have Illustrator you’ll need some other vector program. Or maybe you can get good results with something like https://www.usetracy.com/

[jayhandy7]

Wow…I think the answers to my struggles lies in this tutorials. One thing I have wanted to learn is a method of tracing a photo and ending in a vector file. I think this will be the solution. I can’t thank you enough!!