photo carve

[donnie]

Can someone please help me i'm trying to carve a relief photo.
The photo is a football picture of my nephew.
The carving is in oak.
The picture comes out good in preview mode.
The picture actually comes out good when i cut to except for the face.But the face is not deep enough.
You could see it but when i go to sand even lightly i loose detail.
Parameters are as set cutting depth 0.1
speed 12,000 feed 2.5-plunge 1.5
Using a 0.04 ball nose bit
Everything looks great but the face.
What could i do .
Thank you Donnie!

[MarkJohnston]

It would probably show up much better if you used a wood like hard maple that doesn't have much grain in it. Oak has a lot of grain and it's hard to see a lot of different carving in it.

Mark

[martin54]

Wood selection seems to be quite an important factor as Mark has mentioned, another thing to check is that your starting material is completely flat most people seem to surface the piece before cutting the photo.
Setting the z zero is also very important, these are just things I have read on the forum as I don't do these myself.
May also be worth playing with the settings & trying a few different options using the preview as a guide because it could be down to lack of contrast in that part of the photo.

[donnie]

Thank you both i will try this.
I was thinking of maple but i did not this yet.
I tried mahogany but no luck with that.
Again everything comes out great but the face.
I will try the maple and try contrast at 10 percent.
Thank you both
Donnie!

[mikeacg]

Donnie,

I'm not seeing a picture! Is there one there? Might help to see what you are talking about to make suggestions....

Mike

[donnie]

How do i get the image in photo carve.

[donnie]

Here is the image i'm trying to do.
Everything comes out great except the face area.
Nose and mouth not much detail.

[mikeacg]

Since you said you can see it in the preview mode, here's the same image with higher contrast. Does that help?
I also converted it to grayscale before I played with it.

Mike

[donnie]

Mike the picture looks much better.
I will try this and let you know.
It looks like i will get more depth in the face.
I will try this tomorrow and let you know.
Thanks so much,
one more question where did you covert picture to gray scale.
Is that another program.
Thanks again
Donnie

[tonydude919]

The face looks a little small to get good detail. A better close up of face would help. I do lot of lithophanes and I tell people the closer the face, the better detail you will get. High res picture helps too. Faces on people has to be up close to work good. Check out my lithophanes on Facebook.

Tony

[mikeacg]

Donnie,

I used Photoshop but you can use Gimp (open-source software, free download - I use it on my 64 bit computer and like it alot) if you don't have a good photo processing program. You can do some selective work with the burn/dodge tool to increase the contrast in just small areas of the image if necessary. I do most of my image work outside of my CNC programs...

Mike

[donnie]

Mike!
Thanks again
I will check that out.
Thank you everybody for helping me out.
I really do appreciate it.
Once i get it cut i will post it.
Donnie!

[donnie]

Mike!
I just cut the face area out tonight.
The detail looks very good.
I thank you so much for what you did for me .
My nephew will be very happy.
And i would like to thank all of you that were helping me.
When i get the whole picture done i will post it.
Thanks again to all of you.
Donnie!

[mikeacg]

Glad to hear that Donnie!
Any time I can help I'm glad to do it! I've gotten plenty of help from this forum through my learning stages (still learning every day). What a great source of ideas it has been as well!

Mike

[donnie]

Tony!
I was just on your face book page .
Your work is beautiful
The dog is that done in Aspire really looks great.
Thank you for helping me.
Donnie!