I use an iMac, and yesterday I updated LightBurn to version 9.17. Suddenly, I have a new and serious problem.
I do a lot of work with superimposed raster graphics and vector cuts. Below is an example of a finished piece, followed by a screenshot of the elements in LightBurn that created it (the rastered image and the vector pattern) both superimposed, and separated.
Before I imported my graphic into LightBurn, I used a separate design application to delete the white space so that the image would become transparent but for the actual design. I did this to make it easy to manipulate in LightBurn, and to ensure that I was able to mate it precisely with the corresponding vector pattern.
The technique has worked so well that it has become the bedrock of my engraving work. I have plenty of finished designs created just this way, that all have been “plug and play” without trouble whenever I need to run them… until today, on the new upgrade of LightBurn.
Suddenly, the negative space in my graphics, where the white areas were deleted, wants to engrave black. Below are the very same graphic elements shown above, in a screen shot from LightBurn’s preview.
I tried running the graphic on my laser (K40 with C3D LaserBoard) to see whether the problem was just in preview, but it ran just as pictured in the preview.
I changed no settings. Screenshots of my line and image settings are below.
I was able to establish that the problem is not file corruption. I uploaded two different versions of the same graphic: one with white space deleted as per my customary practice, the other with the white space intact.
Then, I previewed them. This screenshot of the preview shows that it is the negative space within the included graphic that is the issue; LightBurn has begun interpreting it as black, since the upgrade. Smaller contained areas within the left-hand graphic where I never bothered deleting white space show up fine within it.
I decided to try and live with that at least temporarily, by replacing some of my interior graphics with non-negative-space versions… but that seems to have turned into a non-starter for me. I require precise sizing and alignment for my design to work, and suddenly I can’t see to do it! Copying the old vector and pasting it again doesn’t make it appear over the graphic. Nothing I have played with in the edit settings manages it, either. In the screenshot below, you can see my problem.
I really, really don’t want to have to redo every [expletive deleted] thing in my library because the newest version of LightBurn somehow changed the rules; and to the extent that I do, at least in the short-term, I need not to be shut down from creating and modifying precision designs. I’m developing products for a new Etsy store, and right now this problem is putting me into partial shutdown.
I am grateful for any insight, solution or other assistance you can offer.