Help with images

[iantull (Ian Tulley)]

Hi all, I am having some issues with setting up images in general to engrave on various material.

What I would like is some video or tutorial that basically starts me from scratch. I do have Photoshop, to use but not CorelDraw, so any suggestions for software would also be helpful. Also I use Mac not Windows

Here is an image I would like to engrave on timber, possibly thin ply with a light timber top layer.

Thanks
Ian

[LightBurn (Oz)]

There’s a topic here that’s a good starting point for understanding the settings and how they work:

Image engraving guidelines

Engraving photo-realistic images is one of the cooler things lasers can do, but it’s harder than most people realize. The key things people get wrong when engraving images are: Going too fast Setting the DPI too high There are three types of Lasers generally supported by LightBurn Glass tube CO2 lasers RF excited CO2 lasers Diode lasers The first, glass tube CO2, uses gas excited by high-voltage power, almost like a neon tube. When the controller tells the laser to fire, it sends a signal…

There’s a link at the bottom of that topic to a thread Travis posted with some results, and if you look for his name, there are other topics posted from him that have image tests for helping to dial in your DPI settings. The DPI is the hard one - after you have that, power and speed are not too bad to home in on.

[iantull (Ian Tulley)]

Thanks for the fast reply @LightBurn, that is great, it will get me on my way and then of course it will be a lot of testing and tweaking

Ian

[AlanRichard (Alan Csizmazia)]

This may help;

Da big gimping plug-in

I found this video very useful [Using gimp for Laser Engraving] Sasquatch

The thread is about a plugin but the video that is linked is just about general image editing for laser use.
Gimp is free for mac but also quite similar in use to photoshop.

-a

[LasermanSI (Tim Maselj)]

Just want to add to the subject of Gimp, it’s free for PC as well. I think it’s just free in general