I’ve tried multiple photoshop tutorials but every time I try to engrave this (on maple hardwood) it just comes out dark with no detail. I’ve tried converting to greyscale, brightening / adjusting contrast, converting to BMP, dodging, etc. Can anyone provide any advice?!
And that means?
Sorry, I replied to the original post with the photo i’m trying to engrave (I sent the wrong pic first). The first picture is showing what happens on the first few passes before I canceled. It just ends up burning these deep grooves in the wood (instead of the actual picture).
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Try looking at Tips and Tricks category. There is a matrix that will get you to topics.
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What exactly is your methodology here? Are you using proofgrade settings? Graphic? Dark Graphic? Manual settings? Vary-power?
the image you’re using is almost all dark. there’s too little contrast and you’ll end up with a burnt in black area below the sky, just the mountain outlines. you need more highlights in the lower half of that image. it may not be a very good candidate for laser etching.
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I agree with the others, the image is so dark the the mountains will basically be interpreted as a silhouette. You’d have to do some selective adjusting to get any kind of contrast. I did this down and dirty just to show what kind of adjustments might be needed. (I just used a small brush to selectively lighten areas and to sharpen it.)
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That’s correct. I was using the proof grade settings (I attempted all of them). I didn’t know you could do manual settings with varying power though.
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Thank you for the guidance! I’ll use your example to give this another try and keep changing up the settings. I hope I can get a usable product but if not then I’ve got a backup plan (since this is a gift).
Thank you!
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That’s definitely a tricky picture to work with as a photorealistic engrave. It might be interesting go full-out artistic on it and convert it to line art. I’m terrible at art and photography, but to my eye this photo is all about the skyline and the sun; the detail in the trees is not important. Just to explore this idea a bit, I slapped a few filters on in Pixelmator… spent no time at all on this, so the results aren’t great but it gives an idea of a couple of different directions to tweak it out.
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I really like the look of those filters! I’ll have to give those a shot and see if the results are better. Thanks for posting!
If one is going for depth might want to also invert the mountains section of the image so they get engraved deeper than the trees.
I’m getting too sleepy…for a very brief moment, I thought that said ‘Tips and Trickery’…
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I’m sure there is some trickery in there too! It makes me happy to see how much great content the community has generated to help each other.
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Me too!
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I went the artistic approach and I think it turned out pretty well. Thanks to all who helped!! This was done on standard proof grade leather.
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I’m glad you resolved it, thank you for the tips everyone! I’m going to close this thread - if you need anything else, go ahead and post a new topic.