Source image was 677ppi when I had it scaled how I wanted; print was at 340LPI. I did an “ok” job at isolating him from the background, but not perfect - which led to a small amount of fringing around some of the hairs. Isolating can be tricky (for me, at least) around random hair, unless you really take a lot of time to do it properly.
A couple of the things that can make a huge difference on engraves not looking their best is:
- low res source image (I try to have the image pixels per inch at 2x the LPI I want to use)
- JPEG noise/artifacts (these come mostly from saving at low JPEG quality levels, but can also occur in an image that has been saved lots of times). People try to resave as PNG to avoid this, but if the damage has already been done, saving as PNG won’t fix any damage that has already been done.
The noise can often be hardly visible unless you scrutinize an image. It usually appears as “blotches” in the image that are almost white, so they can be difficult to discern. The GF analyzes on a per-pixel basis, so if that pixel isn’t pure white, it’s gojng to get engraved.