Work Flow for Export?

After you export your file out of Glowforge , how do you go about editing it.
I use Adobe PS and when I open the file its very small and not very editable.

Is there a better way. ?

Inkscape is free and works for me.

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Do you have illustrator?

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Yes i do, but I want to be able to edit them in PS or do I want to edit them Illustrator. ?

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Illustrator

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Why? PS is definitely not for editing vector files. That’s kinda like trying to use a screwdriver as a hammer. Like @trually says, use Illustrator.

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Ok so that makes sense, Its just I do not know how to do much in Illustrator but have years with PS so I thought I could maybe get them out of Illustrator and convert them to PS . Sounds like that is the wrong thing to do and that I need to learn how to Do things in Illustrator , Thank you

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Youtube is your best friend to learn Illustrator and Inkscape 101! =)

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Hopefully your familiarity with PS will help a bit with Illustrator, as Adobe uses some of the same concepts and controls across both applications.

But yes, as others have said, Photoshop is a pixel-based or bitmap photo editing tool.
It represents images as a giant matrix of pixels and edits by manipulating all those little pixels.

Illustrator is a vector-based editing tool.
It represents images as instructions, e.g., drawLine( 0,0 to 0,3 )

A tool like Photoshop is fine if you’re just going to engrave images, as when engraving the laser is considering your graphic as a bitmap as well.

But if you want to do cuts or scores, you have to have a vector, because those are the instructions defining the path the laser will cut along.

Hope that description is helpful!

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I’m glad to see that you’ve already received some great information on this topic from our other community members. Thanks folks!

In case it helps, I recommend checking out the 2D Software Matrix located at the bottom of Dan’s post here: https://community.glowforge.com/t/community-glowforge-tutorials-table-of-contents/

The matrix contains links to many handy tutorials about creating designs in various 2D programs, including Illustrator. Please let me know if this helps you get started!

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