Photos of engravings of photos

[jbv]

Sadly I don’t seem to have any good photos of engravings to engrave and photograph, to get really meta with it.

Size limitation issues aside, I’ve been impressed with what the GF can do with photographs.
Here’s a few I’ve done in the last week or so:

Three brothers: the one on the right had weird light on his face in the photo. It looked weird in the photo. I was afraid it would look really weird engraved. It did!

Nolan Lake, CO: I could probably have gotten some better contrast in the trees, but I am super impressed with the ripples in the water!

Kiba: this photo does not do it justice. That gravel/road surface!

Zelda: Those whiskers!

[numosbk]

Cool pictures, are these standard settings or your special numbers?

[cynd11]

Okay, I’m gonna call you the expert Glowforge engraver right now.

[Jules]

Yeah, beautiful results. I’m going to have to tap you for knowledge when I need to engrave something up again…so far my results have been less than stellar.

(Not going to be my thing, apparently.)

[PrintToLaser]

Great shots there…
This really is fun isn’t it?

[jbv]

These are done on 3mm BB ply, so ‘special numbers’ which are very closely related to the proofgrade maple ply settings. The photos themselves are edited in Adobe Lightroom, using Nik Collection plugins.

[jbv]

Sure, if “x” is an unknown quantity, and “spurt” is a drip under pressure!

[Jamie]

I hadn’t heard of nik collection before. It looks interesting. I’ll have to give it a go.

[jbmanning5]

Google acquired the Nik company back in '11 or '12 - which included the Nik Collection and the mobile image-editor, Snapseed.

They charged about $150 for the collection, but about a year ago decided to stop updating/maintaining the Collection and made it free for everyone.

The sharpening tool is fantastic! And the others are pretty good as well!

[jbv]

Yeah, unfortunate that they have stopped maintaining it, but awesome that it is free now. It could stop working with future updates (supports up to CC2015, Lightroom is currently on version CC2015.12, while most of the rest of the suite is on CC2017).

[ptodd]

Awesome engravings … awesome photos!

[dan]

The details on those engraves… I’m speechless! Thanks for the close-up shots.

[jeanneleigh]

Those are amazing! The water ripples are especially cool.

[denisetrahan]

Awesome results… do you process your photos in black and white and then basically let it rip on the glowforge?

[jbv]

pretty much

[denisetrahan]

Any way you can share with me the jpg file you used for any of these engravings?

[jbv]

No, sorry.
I use tif files.

Joking aside, it is against forum policy to ask for files.

In my case, this is part of what I do for a living. I generally don’t give out my personal source files (with some exceptions like the items I have shared here on the forum in the Free Files section). You may contact me directly through my (currently empty) website (listed in my profile) to inquire about licensing, sales, or commissions.

[denisetrahan]

Uh oh… hope they don’t kick me out… just wanted to see how much contrast and light was in the photo.

I finally got my file to engrave to my liking.

Thanks so much for your response.

[kathyswaringen]

Hi Denise,
Any chance you figure out the settings on how to print a clear sharp photo in Glowforge? I run a business that I have used an engraver in the past but a good friend got me a Glowforge for Christmas. So, all the orders without photos, I do, but ones with photos, I send to him. I have told him yet I have received this, I want to keep my options open with him for a back up.

Thank you for any help. I so appreciate it.

[denisetrahan]

Yes ma’am… it’s basically a process of trial and error… once you get the lighting set for proper output… you basically need to use some type of photo editor to lighten the photo considerably. I use a speed setting of 740… full strength with min. 270 lines per inch. good luck!