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poteetjr
01-11-2007, 11:27 PM
Hey forum,
I am a military guy that just bought this carver yesterday. I’ve trying to carve a patch and it is very rough. My work is uneven and showing little dods all in it. Is this the standard type of products that comes from the machine or am I doing some thing wrong? I am more that will in to except advice, especially if I am using the wrong wood or bit. Below are some pictures if that helps..

Jeff_Birt
01-11-2007, 11:37 PM
Where are you graphics from? If you are importing an image there may be some variation in shade that the machine interprets as depth. Try doing a simple carving, like carve a flat (no texture) recess and see what it looks like.

poteetjr
01-12-2007, 07:56 AM
This is the image I imported.

BobHill
01-12-2007, 08:03 AM
Poteetjr,

The CarveWright doesn't recognize color, only shades of grey, so when you imported this, it translated it into shades of grey, but apparently not pure colors, so I suspect that's why the variance in cutting depths. Having said that, Jeff gave you the right test. Do a pure cut and see if thats good, but also do a pure depth carve also. Take the same logo image into something like PhotoShop and YOU do the transfer from color to shades of grey, using no dithering etc. Perhchance was this image 24bit or was it a GIF with perhaps 8bit color? If the 8BIT GIF then I suspect it's color is established in dots large enouth for the carver to see them as different colors dispursed on white or another color (diffused or dithered color). if you do a shades of grey in PhotoShop you'll get pure shades, not dithered. Just remember that diffeent shade gives a different depth and you can reverse in Designer where white or black is top or bottom of the depth set.

Bob

David M.
01-12-2007, 10:34 AM
poteetjr,

With artwork as relitivly simple as this patch I would suggest using your imported image to trace over, using the design tools to recreate the image with actual shapes in Designer. Then you can apply the depths of cut and you will have no quality issue that sometimes come from importing .JPG files.

Jon Jantz
01-12-2007, 11:26 AM
Hi, Poteetjr,

David and Bob are right. The reason the carving turned out bad is because of the poor quality and colors of the .jpg image you were importing.

In a situation like this, it would be best to either find a higher quality image, or even better a vector image of the logo, take into a graphics program like CorelDraw, turn the different parts shades of gray to get the levels you desire, and then take into Designer...

Since this is a fairly easy logo, I dropped it into CorelDraw and re-traced it by hand in about 15 minutes. I am attaching the grayscale image of what I came out of CorelDraw with, also what it would look like in Designer. I also attached the Designer pattern file if you want to download it and look at it or carve it...

I put a gradient on the re-filler tube that made it raised in the middle... I should have taken a few more minutes and could have made it rounded...
I also did a Tools>Outline Pattern and applied a cut path to the resulting pattern to cut the final piece out to the shield shape.

Hope this helps.

BobHill
01-12-2007, 11:44 AM
That came out very nice, Jon.

Bob

poteetjr
01-12-2007, 10:05 PM
I am speach less... Is CorelDraw the best program at the price to create a grey scale image and if it is can some one teach me how to do this? Still need to clean it up but this is what it looked like out of the carver. Thanks Jon Jantz...

pkunk
01-12-2007, 10:24 PM
I am speach less... Is CorelDraw the best program at the price to create a grey scale image and if it is can some one teach me how to do this? Still need to clean it up but this is what it looked like out of the carver. Thanks Jon Jantz...
I've made many with Photoshop Elements from a color jpg to a greyscale and make it a negative. This from the FS.

Jon Jantz
01-12-2007, 10:31 PM
Cool! Glad it turned out to your liking.

I think CorelDraw and Corel Photopaint are the best programs to use, but I'm biased because I've used them for a long time. I'd like to hear what some of the other guys are using for the graphics that are hard to accomplish in Designer.

Also, I will glad to help you all I can. In fact, I have been thinking of putting together a few step by step tutorials on how to create graphics in Corel and how to achieve different effects... if I get one produced here in a few days, I'll shoot it over to you to check out...

poteetjr
01-12-2007, 10:40 PM
Jon are you using CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 or CorelDraw Graphics Suite V 12 PC?

Jon Jantz
01-12-2007, 10:50 PM
I'm using Corel Suite X3.

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are similar programs, like Pkunk mentions, but Corel doesn't have quite as steep a learning curve in my opinion and is less expensive.

Also as Pkunk said, sometimes you can import the graphic directly into Photopaint or Photoshop, turn it to a grayscale, and import it into the Designer. The logo you were starting from however, was so rough, low rez, and splotchy, you would have never been able to get good results without re-tracing it, and to me CorelDraw is the way to go.

It all depends on the quality of the image you are starting with...

David M.
01-12-2007, 10:51 PM
Even the cheapest versions of Corel Draw will do the greyscale conversions, so unless your going to do a great deal of color images you won't need the latest greatest verions out. Photoshop will also do a great job, but is also over kill.

poteetjr
01-12-2007, 10:54 PM
I will start researching the price and look forward to your how to book…

The Bard
01-13-2007, 12:40 AM
I honestly wonder if any other online craftsman communities have so many people willing to put time in to help others get better performance out of their machines and projects.

awesome.

Houndie dog
01-13-2007, 07:56 AM
Jon....I am also interested in any Corel tutorials you are willing to share. I have had Photoshop for a while and that is a complicated program. I downloaded the trail version of Corel to try it out.

BobHill
01-13-2007, 08:14 AM
Bye the way, Bard, I've seen your Opera 18 times on stage and ten times on film now (various versions there) and really like your work. The last time was early December in Las Vegas. Hope you had as good a time there as I did <g>. :D

Bob

Malfunction
01-13-2007, 08:22 AM
I honestly wonder if any other online craftsman communities have so many people willing to put time in to help others get better performance out of their machines and projects.

awesome.

i agree. the helpfullness also acts as a salesman. at least for me it did; i wouldn't have bought the machine if this friendly forum wasn't here.

BobHill
01-13-2007, 08:29 AM
Just rememeber Dog, that CorelDraw is a vector program (it's got a raster PhotoPaint program, however), so for tidying up vector to raster you need a raster program. Take a look at Adobe PhotoShop Elements 5.0 ($100). That's an excellent raster program at far less than full Adobe PhotoShop ($649) and CorelDraw X3 ($379). Corel does give you both vector (Draw) and raster (Paint) and both are excellent programs, but not without a stiff start up cost. For vector, you might also look into a UK product called Xara Xtreme which has both vector and raster functions in it and if you also go with their 3D product you'll see some real advantages to it also.

I have all of the above and use them all, plus Adobe Illustrator, bye the way .. although my CorelDraw is only up to version 11 (still great, however). I don't work for any of these companies, but did do work for Adobe for a few years with these products.

Check for yourself: www.adobe.com www.coreldraw.com www.xara.com

Bob

David M.
01-13-2007, 11:24 AM
The Bard, This forum was created originally for the 200 beta testers of the machine, and now all the new owners comming from Sears. Dec. of this year saw the national release and a spike in the amout of new owners showing up on the forum. The bulk of the advice you see here is comming from the beta testers, with the most time on the machines. If you come in here enough you'll start to recognize the regulars.

We all learned from trial and error and put it out here for the rest to learn from. There is far more information on the pages of this forum than CW's own manual, (not a slight to CW in any way) just and comment on the combined experance you will find here. I guess it is kind of odd to see so much willingness to share information both good and bad, but in the long run it only benifits us all to find the bounds of our machine.

I've seen a lot of grumbling people lately talking about the trouble with their new machines, and Sears. Sorry for your troubles, I know what it's like to have weeks on the software with no machine to run. But for the newbees, keep in mind you are on the leading edge of this national release, and it's selling 200 machines a week (rumor has it). There were only 200 machines total for the last couple years.

Expect growing pains and a certin amount of production troubles with a machine this complicated. CW will get you up and running and back to making chips. We've all had troubles but when you get it dialed in it's worth the wait.

Malfunction
01-13-2007, 11:41 AM
I honestly wonder if any other online craftsman communities have so many people willing to put time in to help others get better performance out of their machines and projects.

awesome.

i agree. the helpfullness also acts as a salesman. at least for me it did; i wouldn't have bought the machine if this friendly forum wasn't here.

poteetjr
01-13-2007, 12:52 PM
Jon
I am downloading the 15 day trail to see how easy the program is to use. All I need to to is Import an image and trace it, correct? How do you add a gradient?

poteetjr
01-13-2007, 05:14 PM
Well forum,
I downloaded the Corel program and figured I would give it a shot. I am truly an armature... After 2 hours of playing with the program this is all I came up with. I need an instructor...

poteetjr
01-13-2007, 05:46 PM
This is what is should to look like.

Jon Jantz
01-13-2007, 06:13 PM
Poteetjr,

I'm going to take your image and re-create it and do a step-by-step using it if it's ok...

I don't know if I'll have time this evening though, but I will get back to you on it.

Digitalwoodshop
01-13-2007, 11:16 PM
From a Retired Navy Chief and former Electronics Instructor, You guys are "All Right" in my book. That was a nice thing you did walking everyone through the steps. I am also interested in the Corel Tips. I still have a Corel Draw for Laser Engravers CD in my Laptop. A 2 CD set that I paid over $300.00 for..... Your advice.... Priceless !!!! Thanks!!! AL

poteetjr
01-14-2007, 05:03 AM
Thanks Forum

poteetjr
01-14-2007, 02:42 PM
This is the website that I downloaded a 15 free trail of Coreldraw, if others would like to try...

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Trials/Login&pid=1047025934319&cid=1047025939841&trkid=cdgs12cnet

rgant05
01-14-2007, 06:47 PM
Can anyone tell me if Corel Draw Version 6 will work on XP without issues? I have it and used it several years ago, but just haven't needed it since I upgraded computers a couple years ago. I know many of my programs required upgrading when I went to XP. I am hoping I can dig out the old version and run it till I can afford to update it. I know I can get version 11 or 12 pretty cheap on ebay. But if 6 will work on XP it will be enough for now. Hope someone has experience with it "back in that era"

David M.
01-14-2007, 06:49 PM
Corel 6 will work just fine on XP, and is more than capable for what is needed for editing for the CW

The Bard
01-14-2007, 08:19 PM
Bob, would you believe I've only seen my own opera on video?

and sorry for those of you unable to get help with your issues this week. It has been hectic for us here with the move and the complications involved. But we are now in the new place and I'm even showing up early just to organize the warehouse so I can get right into working on the problems you call me about.

I wish you guys could show up and see what we're doing in there :D

BobHill
01-14-2007, 09:06 PM
I've been tempted to make the trip again <g>

Bob

The Bard
01-15-2007, 10:11 PM
this time we actually have room for another person without the Firemarshal being involved LOL. But give us a few weeks to get the aesthetics down.

BobHill
01-16-2007, 08:24 AM
I'd wait until at least all the boxes were unpacked, otherwise there might be work to do :roll:

Bob

Jon Jantz
01-17-2007, 05:45 PM
Hey, Poteetjr...

I'm done with one of the tutorials... this a first draft and I'm afraid I went too fast and wasn't clear enough in places so I'm putting it out here for a few of you to download and check out. I need to make it at a little less video quality as well to get the file size down. It's around 160 mb and will probably take about 15 min to download from my server.

I'm burying it down in this post so I don't get a ton of traffic on my server... if there's interest I'll look at hosting it somewhere I can have high traffic. As it is, whoever wants to is welcome to download this and tell me what you think.

As I said, it's rough, and I'd like to redo it and make it slicker, but just wondering if there's interest in a few little tutorials like this...

To make it work, download it to a folder, then Unzip it. It should unzip into its own folder with about 8 or 10 files in it. Click on the Html file "Logo-Digitising.html" and it should run.

(((Sorry, took the link down for a day or so to rework the video, will be posted again, soon.)))

Good luck.

BTW: This video is how to vectorize a logo using CorelDraw.. adding contours to maked beveled edges, and then importing into Designer as a .gif with a transparent background.

JBarr
01-17-2007, 07:25 PM
Well Done. Very informative.

Jon Jantz
01-17-2007, 07:58 PM
Thanks, JBarr... Welcome to the forum.

I just wanted to add.... if y'all don't mind... if you download it and watch it, let me know what you think, good or bad.

I don't have any way of knowing how many people download it, so will gauge interest for more of these by the response...

Thanks again.

Aaron B
01-17-2007, 08:01 PM
Thanks, JBarr... Welcome to the forum.

I just wanted to add.... if y'all don't mind... if you download it and watch it, let me know what you think, good or bad.

I don't have any way of knowing how many people download it, so will gauge interest for more of these by the response...

Thanks again.

Downloading it now, since it might help me decide which software to buy to do more stuff. I will give some feedback at least by tomorrow in case I don't get to watch it tonight.

David M.
01-17-2007, 08:11 PM
Hey Jon, nice job.

I think this kind of step by step training is really needed you should do more. You seem to have come up with a method that can be used for most any image. Thank you for your efforts.

Jeff_Birt
01-17-2007, 11:43 PM
Jon, nice work! It was altogether good, perhaps a bit rushed in some areas as it was hard to follow you cursor to see what you were clicking on (shows you really know Corel Draw though :lol: ). I am going to try it out tomorrow myself (when I'm not quite as tired).

Questions:

1 ) is there a reason you manully traced the logo rahter than using the built in automatic tracing?

2 ) can the contour method be modified to produce a slight radius rather than a bevel.

3 ) would you mind if I split this part of the thread (from you post of the video onward) into a seperate thread under the Software or Teqniques forums?

4 ) if a bunch of us found your videos really useful do you have a Pay-Pal account where donations can be made?

rgant05
01-18-2007, 01:22 AM
Jon,

Excellent job on the tutorial. Those type of tutorials are very much desired and needed in my opinion. I know, even as much graphics background as I have, it was extremely informative and helpful. I think some of us can begin to see the usefulness and appreciate the use of other programs to do some of the more complex design work. Although Designer is a VERY powerful program in its own right and can do a tremendous amount as a standalone, the use of programs such as Corel, unleash another whole new dimension. You have great skills as an instructor. As far as the speed of the subject matter its hard to ever say what is the right speed. I am sure some might have thought that it was too slow where others like me, not having used Corel Draw since version 6 was somewhat left in the dust with the selecting of this function or that function or this tool and that tool. Best part is that as a download we can watch it over and over, and follow along with the program and stop and start it as desired till we can find everything.

Top notch job on the work. I would love to see more and would also be interested enough to make a donation....although from experience you may not make any money or even pay for your expertise, but might at least $ee that people desire the instructional help that you are so able at produceing.

I give it a strong 5 stars rating !!

Roger

rgant05
01-18-2007, 01:26 AM
P.S. I think the CarveWright people would be wise to enlist your help on maybe some use and technique tutorials with the machine, software etc. Afterall, the more people can learn and the less frustration had while doing so, translates into more machines sold by the virtue of more people able to follow the learning curve to a successful production of work.

Jon Jantz
01-18-2007, 02:08 AM
Thanks all for the input. Glad that you found it helpful.

Jeff,

1. The reason I manually traced the object was to demonstrate how to do it. That bitmap was high enough quality to probably use the AutoTrace but most bitmaps I've seeing are too poor in quality to get a good trace. If the resolution is too low you end up with a jaggy vector image with all kinds of nodes and doesn't do you a lot of good.

I have a method for cleaning up a logo in Photopaint, turning it to a black and white image and using AutoTrace that works pretty good. Might be a subject for another video I guess!

2. You can use the contour method to produce a slight radius. In face I'm working on one right now that demonstrates that... Also how to do a radius using the gradient fills...

3. I sent you a private message about this. I won't mind at all once I re-work the video just a little and add a couple of things to it.

4. I do have a Paypal account. While I was just trying to help answer some of the questions, I'd be open to donations... might help me cover the cost of the Camtasia software and also inspire me to do some more of them...

Now to everyone, I'm going to take down the link to rework the video just a little. I'll try to have it back up tomorrow evening.

Thanks again for the reviews...

DougM
02-22-2007, 12:19 PM
Howdy all I am still on the learning curve to all of this, and was looking for the link to dl the video, but can't seem to find it. Could someone repost the link please?

Thank you!
Doug

The Bard
02-22-2007, 12:30 PM
it is on the home page of the website... under "video demo"

CallNeg151
02-22-2007, 12:32 PM
Howdy all I am still on the learning curve to all of this, and was looking for the link to dl the video, but can't seem to find it. Could someone repost the link please?

Thank you!
Doug

I think you are referring to the tutorials that were made by Jon Jantz, and posted on his website:
http://www.allcw.com/
He has a couple of free tutorials, and one he sells at the bargain-basement price of $10.

DougM
02-22-2007, 12:42 PM
Thanks guys for the info!

Opps totally forgot about the video on the main site (slaps self upside the head).

Doug

mobident
02-23-2007, 11:40 AM
Jon,
Could you post the superman logo from the tutorial. I'd like to work through it with the tutorial.

Bruce