I was recently gifted with a couple nice big pieces of 1/4" white acrylic (not Proofgrade but still very nice) and I decided to use it to experiment with doing a lithophane.
I chose this photo of a night-blooming cereus that I took of the one in my yard that bloomed last year:
I used the new portrait mode on an iPhone XS to isolate the flower from the background, and it worked great!
Here’s the resulting lithophane:
It’s a start!
The process I used was: photo --> .stl model --> depth map --> Photoshop convert to PNG --> Glowforge.
That turned out very nice. I have been playing around lately with Meshlab and just as when I try to use Blender, it is somewhat daunting. I don’t know what half of the functions are referring to.
How about I put together a rough step by step of what I did on this one? Look for it in BTM soon. And I’ll be glad to show you in person on your next visit.
About 2.5" x 2.5"
I almost threw it back in for an additional defocussed pass, but decided not to because I thought I might lose fine detail. I might give it another go though.