Soldiers

[Sarge]

Both of my kids are in the military, and so are both of my buddy's kids. He retired two years after me. His boys were able to get together at Fort Benning, Georgia before Christmas. I took the pic and Imported it into Designer. I'll try to get it carved this weekend. I'm now trying to clean up my kids Basic Training pics to do the same. From personal experience, veterans and military families will eat these up!!!

Alright........ All you CW whizzes out there, give me some feedback. PLEASE!!!!!

AIRBORNE!

[rgant05]

Sarge,

Looks better than I was expecting it to look in Designer. I have not had much luck importing photographs into designer. I havn't run into anyone yet who has a good solution to cleaning up and preparing photos for carving. I do think that your looks better if you use the invert option. Gives the faces more realistic curvature. Also, you may want to turn down the hiegth down a little bit from 500. You're gonna have a lot of high sharp peaks. I tried to carve an imported pencil drawing the other day and wasn't very satisfied, but haven't tried to do a picture. I have seen some that were carved in opaque acrylic (on the back) and then back lit.... looked great.

Let us know how it turns out. Sometimes learning how not to do something is almost as important as learning how to do it. I agree, learn how to carve pictures of kids, grandkids, and soldiers will make you very popular :)

Roger

[Bill Kearns]

That should be an interesting carve! I hope you post the final on the forum, would be interesting to see how it turns out. Is that B/W going to be in negative form to be carved ?

Were you Army Or Marine? I am sure that your proud of their decision. My son decided not to have a military jaunt, which ended our family service to the country (since 1784) but that does not make me less proud of him.

Bill, HMC (FMF) USN (ret)

[bernie]

What you have to do with the pic have do to smooth it I have HP IMAGE ZONE and in it. it has adjust image then I go to smoothen textures so it smoots the pic out and you see the difference in grain the pic

[Sarge]

Sarge,
Let us know how it turns out. Sometimes learning how not to do something is almost as important as learning how to do it. I agree, learn how to carve pictures of kids, grandkids, and soldiers will make you very popular :)

Roger

Thank you!!!!! OOPS!!!!!! I "threw" this together LATE last night. I didn't rotate it or magnify it like I should have. I should have slowed down and done it right, but the initial view looked better than I'd ever expected. I've done the adjustments and I'll get it carved this weekend. :(

Bill, I was a paratrooper in the Army for twenty years. Spent a few around SF, a couple as an Instructor at the Airborne School. I actually "pushed, cussed, kicked and almost begged" my kids to enlist. My 22 y/o daughter played pig-headed for three years and bummed off her friends. I kicked her outta the house two months after graduating High School. Her 19 y/o lil' brother called her from Basic Training and actually convinced her to enlist!! He enlisted while still in school and is a Supply Tech in the Army (Iraq). My daughter is a Korean Linguist in the Air Force. Pics attached.

OH,BTW............ I couldn't hold back. I broke down and bought some nice, beautiful hardwoods yesterday. 8 BF of Black Walnut, 8 BF of Eucalyptus and 7.5 BF of Sapele (closest thing in grain and texture to Koa I can find and afford here). I'm working on a plaque for an ex-Marine kid for his GF.

[Kenm810]

Mighty Fine looking Troops Sarge

[Crewdawg707]

Great additions to our military family. Proud to have them!!!

[ramlin]

Got a grandson following in the Naval tradition. He served in Iraqi Freedom,
and Desert Storm aboard the carriers Carl Vinson and the USS Roosevelt

[VtBlues]

I saw a photo carved on another website that was probably the best looking I've seen yet. What the guy had done was carve shallow. A depth of only about .15 and cut height of around 200 if I remember correctly. That way he got pretty good detail without all the exagerated peaks. Just a thought but it might look good if you did(on the pic of your son) for instance. Doing it as two seperate objects. One for the background one for the central image. Do the background at something alike .2 depth with a height of only about 20 or so and then use a shallower depth on the main image to make it stand out and still use a shallower height to keep down the exagerated peaks. Just a thought. Would love to see them when you are done.

[Dirtydan]

Sarge,

This Thread was a GREAT Idea... Let me know when you get those carvings done... Can't wait to see them..

[ramlin]

After looking at this thread, I gave it a try, using the .jpg shown in
my earlier reply. Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.

[Dirtydan]

Ramlin,

That came out good... You will have a lot of sanding to do on all those little bumps caused by the shadows in the material or slight color shifts in the .jpg.

If you want, you could send me the picture (.jpg) full size and I'll take a wack at it... and send it back to you. TheGunny@ddsf-ent.com

If you don't want to do that, try this...

In your photo editor, erase a little around the bottom of the picture...making sure to remove all the pixels. Save the picture with all the empty space included in the picture. Save as a .png 256 Grayscale. As you import the picture into Designer, crop out most of the empty space on the picture, but be sure to leave a little on all four sides then click on Next. Now push the Lower button a few times and all the background should turn to black, if it wasn't already. Once all the background is black, click on the Finished Button and save. I'd save it with a different name than the first one you did...so you'll have both.

Hope this helps... Let us see how your final carving turns out.

Also, the harder the wood, the better, but what ever sanding you might still have to do will take more time... Got's to take the Good with the Bad:p

Another thing to remember, the bigger the carving the better it will turn out. I would limit the picture to the head and neck area only, this should give you real good results.

[Dirtydan]

Here's the pic back... I always have trouble emailing people with earthlink , so I've attached everything here...:D These still need a little work, but I thought you'd enjoy doing it... Have fun... and good luck with your new machine...