First try at picture - looking for help / advice

[rondolg (Ron Greene)]

I have a jtech 3.8w laser and have been playing with different things. Pretty excited to get better at this, see a lot of potential. I’m trying my first picture with lightburn.

i imported it directly into Lightburn with the following settings -

So far this is what I’ve got - after 3hrs

Any thoughts on what I can change to improve?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

That image is going to be tricky, because even just looking at the original it’s hard to pick out the details.

Try this - select the image, right-click and Show Properties. Set these values:

The original is on the left, the adjusted one is on the right. The enhancement exaggerates the edge details a bit, and I increased the contrast, and lowered the gamma to give you a bit more brightness range:

[rondolg (Ron Greene)]

Thanks Oz! The current one is almost done. I’m going to write my setting / time / etc under each image as a go. I’ll put your settings in and start another test soon. What about speed and power? Do they look ok for now?

[LightBurn (Oz)]

I would go faster with more power myself, but I’m not sure how fast the controller you have will go. That looks like an X-Carve, so it’s probably running 8 bit GRBL, which is going to limit you some. I would drop the DPI down to the default (254) until you have things dialed in a little more, and then change one thing at a time from there.

[rondolg (Ron Greene)]

Hey Oz, here are a couple more tries. I think the one with the settings you suggested is probably the best. I’m sure I could keep running it but I think I’ve got the idea.

Thanks again

[bbro54 (Bill Brothers)]

This is an excellent commentary around images. Thanks for the info as well. I am seeing that the preview looks almost black for something that looks about right on the main canvas for a jarvis processed image. Is that normal? The user who asked me for help indicated it engraved very lightly. I am preparing for an upcoming presentation to our laser group on techniques for image engraving. I really appreciate the new enhancement settings in the shape properties and this helps me frame up how to use them.

[LightBurn (Oz)]

@bbro54

I am seeing that the preview looks almost black for something that looks about right on the main canvas

Zoom in - Unfortunately I can’t make pixels smaller, and the preview is just plotting the paths that the laser will take, whether they overlap or not, so yes, it’s normal.