How to prepare a charcoal drawing for GLOWFORGE

Hi all, sorry if question not in the right place (I’m totally new to glowforge). I’m still trying to get a hang of glowforge and inkscape in general, and reacquainted with Photoshop, but can anyone give me some tips on how to prepare a charcoal or pencil artwork for glowforge? I’m having a bugger of a time trying to clean it up and strengthening the design (figuring I need to in Photoshop before using Inkscape to make it a sag?). I have a very large file but saved as a small jpg just to show.
Thanks all!
Cliff Turner

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It generally does a fabulous job on line drawings, but it’ll depend on what exactly you’re trying to do.

At the most basic level I’d darken it and up the contrast so you have a pure white background.

Then run a test of a section or minimized version. If you’re happy, great! If not, figure out exactly what you’re looking for and either adjust for that, or come back here for more advice :slight_smile:

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Thanks so much, but to clarify, you’d darken etc in Photoshop?

I use a different program (getpaint.net) but yes.
Darkening lowers the greys to truer blacks, and then increasing the contrast raises the background to full white.

Depending on exactly what look you’re going for to do it either a bunch or only a little. The Gandalf I linked to I only modified a little bit.

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Oh I see the links now… thanks so much!

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You’ll be interested in #9.

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In Photoshop desaturate first abs then levels and curves adjustments will be your best friends for that artwork.

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Personally I would leave it as a bitmap. Save it as a 300-600 dpi png image in photoshop and load into the GF. Photo engraves allow greyscale while vector engraves do not.

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