Hey folks,
Definitely falls into “everything else” category. NASA has put up a bunch of really cool posters for download and print.
Nothing laser related, just seems like the type of crowd who would enjoy. I guess maybe engrave one…?!
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Cool, yep I love it.
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There’s another set available over at
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So, how would you go about taking one of these posters (or perhaps a vintage travel poster) and turn it into a laser engraved design? Just thinking!
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I don’t know myself so just tossing it out there.
You can download as a PDF or TIFF. If either of those could be opened in inkscape I am guessing g you can grey scale it. From there I am unsure as to how it goes from grey scale pic to GF or any laser.
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Download. Open in Corel or AI or Inkscape. Convert to BMP. Convert to a dithered b&w BMP. Send to laser.
Of course with a GF you should be able to just send it to the laser without all the manual conversions.
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The colors of these particular images are a big part of the look and feel, and I don’t think they look that great in greyscale, but they would engrave.
You can open a tiff in AI and do an auto-trace. Since these all started as vectors, the auto-tracing results are pretty good, but hand-tracing will get you the best results.
Much more work, but a way cooler result IMO, would be to separate the traced image by color, and cut each color from wood (painted before or after) or acrylic, and then assemble.
That is essentially what I do when I remake/remix old advertising/propaganda into cut-vinyl wall-signs.
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I would be some work, but you could remake some of these posters using the Glowforge to cut out the woodblocks. The Mars one has five colors, so a definite challenge and process, but way cool when done. the Dirty home one would work with just two blocks.
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Oooh, I have a poster printer at work…