Sharpen a PNG engraving

I received a PNG file (attached). It imports into my layout just fine, but when I go to engrave it I am getting a very inconsistent burn. The text is too light (can barely see it), the circle is crisp and the banner in the middle burns right through the material. Is there a way to “sharpen” the image so everything is engraved with the same clarity? Thanks!

Can you show what settings you’ve used for it, and how large you’ve set it to burn? If the output is small, you likely need to increase the DPI setting on the engraving layer.

Use the preview - this button:image (or Alt - P)
To get an idea of what the output will look like without having to send it.

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This type of image lends itself well to conversion to vector and fill rather than bitmap engraving. I used Inkscape to perform a bitmap trace before I realized that Lightburn now has that feature. The one on the left is the LB trace, with the Inkscape on the right. No difference to my eye, your mileage may vary, California mileage will be less.

You may get better results if you search the 'net for oyster vector images and clam images. Maybe not. Those are rather abstract looking critters! (grin)

Result attached.

p.s. why can’t we attach .svg or .ai files?

oyster festival.lbrn (498.3 KB)

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Because they are not allowed for security reasons. :wink: You can post a link to those files along with a bitmap of what they look like.

LightBurn licenses Potrace, which is the same tracing engine used by InkScape, so there shouldn’t be a difference. :slight_smile:

I have found on some images like this that setting the line interval (DPI) in LB just a little bigger can stop the over burn on large areas of black without really affecting the quality of the rest. Just going from 0.1mm line interval to 0.15 makes all the difference.

Cheers

David

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