I’m looking for a quicker method of doing one thing. If you look at my image, my customer has requested a darker outline (blue) and a lighter interior (black). Is there a way to burn this without having to go through the process of using the boolean commands to create each portion individually? I noticed that the white sections do not get burned even though they are separate entities created to create the feature (layer on top of layer on top of layer), but it doesn’t appear to work the same way for layers that are anything but white. I tried to burn this and it does the blue layer in its entirety and then burns the black layer over top of that. I feel like there is just something I didn’t select to make this burn properly.
Also, is there a way to burn this in one shot or does it always have to do one layer at a time. Which now that I think of it might actually take care of my first question.
if you duplicate the black layer it should turn white so you can burn the blue layer and then delete the duplicate. then just only burn the black layer next. i am not on a pc with lightburn but I think that is how I approached similar workflow before.
If you want to do it all in one shot, you could burn it as a raster, like you would a photo.
In another software you would set the outline (blue bit in your screenshot) to be black, and the fill colour (black in your screenshot) to be a grey, to mimic the outcome you desire on the final piece. Like this (but better/not done in MS paint):
Then save that image as a jpg/png/something that uses pixels, import it to Lightburn, and engrave that image. Bit of info about the different engrave modes here: Image Settings - LightBurn Software Documentation
If you let me know what software you use for creating vectors normally I can probably help you further with this process if you need. Most vector-editing software can also export a raster/bitmap/pixel-version of the image.
It might take a little bit of experimenting to get the right grey for the ‘light shade’ you desire, you may need to do a couple of test engraves. But if it’s a job you do often, it would definitely shave a lot of time off each job, reducing it down to one pass.
Thank you for taking the time to share all of this info! I’ll look into this for sure. I never think to import it that way because my laser doesn’t seem to output very well with images/photos (or perhaps I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to really optimize my settings!). Now that you say it though, solid color stuff like this is better, I did do one and the quality was pretty decent. Thanks!!!
With solid shapes, ‘Newsprint’ dither mode works quite well - it patterns a little, but if you set the DPI to 300, possibly a bit higher, it’s hard to see the patterning, and the shading is good.
You don’t have to Boolean for this either - you normally just duplicate the boundary between the colors. Have a look at this post (and the video I responded with) to see what I mean:
