Thought you guys might want to critique my first attempt at lasering a photo onto black marble. This is a memorial plaque to be sent to my cousin's widow. Cancer got him two weeks ago.

The photo was scanned from a good color studio photo. Cropped and adjusted in Corel Photopaint. (scanned at 600dpi originally then adjusted to 300dpi to send to Photograv). Dropped into Photograv, autoprocessed using the blackmarble.prm. Then imported into the Corel Draw layout, no resize, just placed where it was supposed to be.

When I lasered it, I lasered the photo first at 300dpi setting to match the photograph. When that finished, I dropped the photo out of the layout, and ran the text at 600dpi. I applied ArmorAll prior to lasering to make the white pop out more. (it worked, I ran this prior on a piece of marble that had a pattern that I didn't want to send but keep for myself and their was a noticible difference).

Anyway, there it is. Comments appreciated. (The photo of the post is not too hot, it's hard to photograph that stuff) I was also kind of miffed because the marble had grain or whatever you call it right on my subjects nose in the picture, but, such is life.

Larry,
This looks great! Where did you get the black marble.prm? I've got generic black granit but can't find a PRM for black marble...

Mike

Larry,

Looks like your engraving settings were perfect.

As an opinion on the typesetting:

1) I wouldn't run the lines so close to the edges of the plaque.

2) Letter heights are a bit out of balance. I would make a more subtle transition between pt. sizes. It doesn't take much of a difference in type hts. to create a noticeable visual difference, in lines you want to accentuate.

Without so much emphasis on the size of type, you may have been able to make the photo larger and more of a focal point of the piece.

Larry,
Thanks! I found it on my photograv disk...I thought all of them were loaded when I installed...man! a year of wishing I had this and it was there all along!

Mike

Larry,
Couple of more questions and I'll leave you alone.

1. You mentioned getting an upgraded disk...what version of photograv do you have? mine is 2.11 (I think)

2. What power and speed settings did you use for your photo? Do you use the setting on the "info" page in photograv?

Thanks,

Mike

I have 2.11 also. They did send me another disc, but we had trouble with the original install. My laptop didn't like the disc, although all of the other computers here liked it OK. I finally ended up having to run the setup file from my hard drive where I had copied it using a removable jump drive from one of the other machines. But it works OK.

You know, I think I just used the settings that were in the Epilog manual for power and speed. I did use the autoprocess feature in Photograv though. But I did kinda run it in two parts as I explained. Ran the photo at 300dpi then the text at 600. I put that Armorall on there and that worked to make it whiter too.

Larry,

Was his daughter's name really Gennifer? Should it have been "Jennifer" or is it a case of a unique spelling of a common name?

Jim

Mike, thanks for the critique.

New? 8-O I may be other things but one thing I ain't is new(at least not in years). Sixty two years old in July. Been doing graphics and computer work for nigh on to 25 years now. Yes, laser is totally new to me, but not CNC sign work or rotary engraving. I had a lot of information to get in a small space, didn't have a huge choice. Font change might have helped though, Commercial Script is a dignified looking font to me, I use it a good bit.

VERY impressive!!

Now pat yourself on the back, and take a big bow!!