Hello lovely people. I hope someone can give me some insight on the attached photo. If you look close the engraved leather has different darkness mostly noticeable on the leaves where my arrows are pointing. My machine has been cleaned thoroughly. My settings are identical for each bookmark engraved. And they are on same sheet of veg tan leather. But for some reason some of the leaves are very, very light compared to others. Can anyone explain the reason for this variation in darkness?
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Looks to me that youâre using a greyscale image for different âdepthsâ of engrave. Leather (and non-proofgrade wood) are inconsistent materials, so you find settings (in this case, a shade in your image) that only just work on one section, they may not produce the desired results in others.
I can give an example, a lot of people get very inconsistent engraves across laminated strips of bamboo. The solution is generally to increase the settings to produce an overall darker engrave, which will âbreak thruâ the tougher surface to produce a more satisfactory result.
In your case, Iâd suggest darkening the shade of those leaves.
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I will second Eflyâs comment. some materials are more uniform than others. I have seen what you are experiencing on leather and bamboo cutting boards.
up the power so it is darker across the piece, only thing you can do really.
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Thank you. I unfortunately only have this less than optimal color jpg file to work with. And I donât have any way of converting to vector image (if that is what is needed) The customer wants the leaves to be lighter than the actual flower. Only sometimes they barely show up at all.
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Thank you for your input 
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What is your experience with graphic editing tools? Anyone familiar with raster (bitmap) editing should be able to âfixâ that in a couple of minutes. Lose the color, adjust the curves, possibly re-fill the leaves with a slightly darker shade.
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I only have Inkscape, I may be wrong, but I donât think I can vectorize with that program.
You can, but that is not what needs to be done. That would be one way to tackle it, but vector isnât required. A bitmap editing program like gimp would be more suitable.
The learning curve for both of these programs is pretty steep, however. If youâre going to do custom work, itâs kind of assumed you have experience using the appropriate tools. Itâs fine that you donât, we will have to start somewhere, but be prepared for a long learning experience.
As stated, it wouldnât take more than a few minutes for someone with that experience to make the necessary adjustments. Or, you could simply tell the person that gave you that file but itâs not suitable for the laser as it is.
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I spent a couple of minutes looking at the file and that affirmed my initial conclusion - this file is just not suitable as-is. You need the source vector version, or a cleaner bitmap (i.e. PNG vs JPG)âŚ
Hereâs what I found when trying to adjust colors - there are simply too many JPEG artifacts from the poor compression to make the simple adjustments I suggested, or to use the Trace Bitmap feature to convert to vector in Inkscape. All of these mis-placed pixels make it an impossible task. i.e. the random edges, the lighter sections in the grey and scattered additional red pixels in what should be whitespace.
Someone more skilled than myself (Iâve only got 25 years or so bitmap editing experience, but for fun/hobby, not a living) may have a better answer.
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Oh wow, interesting. I told them the file was not a good quality but this view is remarkable. I dont normally do customs for anyone. Itâs very rare simply because I donât like the stress. I was doing this for a friend who runs an organization for military and first responders with PTSD. I made 80 notebooks last year using the same file. See attached photo. But this year she asked me to do bookmarks on leather. I assume because itâs so much smaller is also another reason of poor engraving??? (Besides poor quality of file)
Is it ok for me to ask for someoneâs help on this platform to fix the file and I would gladly payđ. And thank you so very much for all your input youâve given to me. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond
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The fact that itâs larger would not change the engrave per se, but inconsistencies in the material would be masked better because they are covering a larger area.
It is also possible that it is not the exact same material â unless you bought what youâre using for the bookmarks at the same time.
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Thanks tons! I appreciate your helpđ