Help with a scanned item

[tablerock]

I have scanned in an item and wish to use it in a carving but how do I clean it up and get rid of the deep sides on it. I am a newbie to this and thought a pro at this might give me some advice. Thanks.
I have attached the file as well.

[badger]

You can do a couple things with it. As a pattern you can reduce the depth of it, you can smooth or blur it in designer, you can save it as an image then take it into a graphic designer editor such as Photoshop or others and play around with it.

Just resetting the depth which looked to be .8 to around .25 even would get rid of the deep sides. But you will also loose detail doing it that way so exporting it as an image and then trying to clean it up some in a graphic editor will do you good.

[AskBud]

How about trying a "Recessed" carve area around the image?
AskBud

[cestout]

I set it at 0.6 and a height of 300 and it looks pretty good, but I would crop it in pattern editor to get rid of the drop off around the edges.
Clint

[tablerock]

How exactly did you do the recessed carve area?

[AskBud]

How exactly did you do the recessed carve area?

I drew a rectangle and clicked on the "Region" Icon (recess).
I set the depth at what I wanted, and then played with the depth(s) of the pattern, and the recess, to get the look I wanted.
See this link on Regions & Surfaces for even more insight:
http://www2.wcoil.com/~nharbison/cw-regions%20and%20surfaces.zip

The effect I was looking for was to make it appear as a "Raised" carving. If I wanted, I could make the recess (carve region) larger than needed and then trim the board by hand to end up with a project that has no edge as high as the carve.
AskBud

[mtylerfl]

How exactly did you do the recessed carve area?

Hello,

Creating a carve region is really easy. Covered that in the Tips & Tricks - ISSUE 3 December 2007 "Handy Tips for Everyone!" (http://www.carvebuddy.com/PDFs/CW_TipsandTricks_Newsletters/CarveWrightTips&Tricks_Dec07.pdf)

When you get a chance, try to read all the Tips & Tricks issues. I think you will enjoy learning more about your machine and software.

All the Best...

[cestout]

How to use the pattern editor is also in a Tips & Tricks, but I don't know which one. It was quiet informative.
Clint

[carlcath]

It looks to me like you have an image that is to busy for a carving. You have a horse, a rock formation, and two children in the foreground. Then you have a train, a small tractor, a large house, trees, and other plants of various sizes. It seems to me that out of this you are trying to get a 3D effect like one does in a painting. I have found that to be very difficult. (making a carving from a painting) I would suggest you work on the perspective by adjusting the sizes of the objects in the background. To do that you are probably going to have to put the whole thing in a program like photoshop or perhaps even in the free program Art Rage and cut out the different elements in the background and resize them. Reduce the total number of elements and make patterns out of say the house, the train, and the tree and the foreground that would contain the rock formation, the horse, and the children. I would omit the tractor entirely. Then put all the patterns back together again in the CW program and adjust the merge and depth of each pattern till it looks right. I have played with this a couple of times and cut them in scrap wood with varying results. If you glue up a work piece with various woods so the train and house are a different texture than the foreground I think this could look great. I was going to do something like that with a house, a horse, a fence, and a train but never seemed to find the roundtuit. Making a good 3d in 8/10 of an inch requires a lot of perspective ability. Good Luck and happy carving,
Carl