After setting up my GF and playing… I mean learning what it can do, I turned to one of the original reasons for me buying it. Making my sisters wedding invites/orders of service/wedding favours.
Well, the delays shot that idea down! But in a few days is their 2nd wedding anniversary…
So I decided to make her and my brother in law a set of personalised slate coasters using a couple of their wedding photos.
I started by making a test palette. With all of them (following advice from various online sources) I started with wiping the plain slate coasters (like £3 from amazon for 4) with mineral oil.
All of which told me nothing. I was originally going to have several layers with different power and speeds but there wasn’t enough change for me with my test palette.
Then I discovered the option in manual engrave in the GF app to set grayscale to vary power! Light bulb!
So I started again.
The procedure for editing the photos was the same for all of them in Photoshop.
1 - Crop at 1 to 1 (for the square coasters)
2 - Desaturate image
3 - Use levels controls to raise the blacks and lower the whites until the grayscale image had a good distinction between light and dark to show the detail and outlines. Use Curve control for fine adjustments if I couldn’t quite get them right.
4 - Invert image (as lasered slate goes light inverting the graycscale ends up with what will eventually end up lighter as black so GF knows to engrave it)
5 - Save as jpeg
I then uploaded them to the GF app and used custom material (0.25 inches)
Then put the slate in the GF, on cardboard to catch any over spill. and lined the image over the coaster.
I used speed at 850 and power at 55% and set grayscale to vary power and set lines per inch to 340.
AND…GO!
(6500% Speed!!! in reality each one took about 25 minutes)
After they were finished i wiped them again with mineral oil, which dulled them slightly but brought out the detail alot!
Really happy with them!
But… they needed a home!
So I whipped up a little box for them.
Notice the missing corners so the coasters are easily accessible.
And a special lid…
The lid ends up under the coasters so either the lid or the coasters are flush with the top of the box.
All in all I’m really happy with the results, hopefully my big sister will be too!
THANKS for all the settings/info! Love your work!