Hi all, a very good friend from the Army passed away recently and I am producing some memorial slates for his mother and sister. The only photo I have of him in uniform was taken about 30 years ago when he was giving away his sister at her wedding. I have enhanced the photo as much as I can with the software I have but I am still not happy with the results. I have tried some of the online software but they only seem to enhance the face and nothing else. Does anyone know of a product that will enhance the whole photo? I do not have the time to learn Photoshop (nor do I want to buy the programme for what will probably be a one off job) as I need to get this done as soon as possible. Any assistance/advice greatly appreciated.
Any software recommendation will likely depend on what types of enhancements you’re trying to achieve and why you’re not satisfied with the current offerings.
Have you experimented with the in-built adjustments in LightBurn? They work on the entire photo at a time.
If that doesn’t work for you can you elaborate on what you’re trying to achieve, what you’ve tried, and what’s happening instead?
There’s a freely available tool that’s largely similar to Photoshop and runs in the browser called photopea.com. This doesn’t solve the learning part but would get you access to a powerful tool for free. The product works and feels almost exactly like Photoshop so many guides would work very closely.
Keep in mind that depending on the degree to which you want to enhance the photo there may not be a simple one-step solution and could require more in-depth understanding and application of the tool.
Thanks for that, I will try the software you suggest. I am aware that engraving on slate is not going to produce a perfect photographic likeness, I am simply trying to achieve a reasonable likeness. I reckon I have tried every setting permutation in Lightburn and Imagr, plus a number of photo enhancing products and am still not happy with the results. On top of that, I scanned the photo in 300, 600 and 1200 Dpi and experimented with all those as well. What is really annoying is that when I preview the photo prior to engraving, it looks really good so maybe it’s my laser settings that are out. I have an Ortur LM3 with a Lasertree K30 module, I have tried different algorithms, Dpi settings and everything else I can think of, to no avail.
You’ve got a lot of moving parts with this one. Mastering your laser’s relationship to the slate material itself is likely going to be the long pole on this. I’d suggest breaking that activity down to two major areas: 1) behavior of the material to specific speed/power settings. A material test would be useful here as well as interval test. 2) understanding what aspects of a photo best translate to image burnability on slate. I’d suggest testing multiple other simpler images using the various image settings in LightBurn (eg stucki, dither, etc) as a start. You should be able to leverage what you learned in the first step to guide your image optimizations for the given task. The final image may not look visually great prior to burning but translates well to the final product.
There are likely some online guides for this particular purpose but I’m not aware of anything particularly good.
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You also have to invert the picture for engraving on slate
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