Carving Images Issue

Need a little help here from some of you who are more knowledgeable than me!

So I imported a picture of my son and his wife in their Halloween costumes, looked pretty good to me, the only thing I added besides the imported image was a text for the 2020. I carved it and did not come out very well.

Are there any aspects of the imported picture that I can do to the picture before I import it like inverting?

Also there is a line at the beginning of the text (2020) that showed up? What could have caused this?

I also have an issue with the density of the wood, it is a piece of wood I got from a buddy for practice and it does not carve well, it is pine. Some of the other pine I have you can feel the difference in the density so the final carving will be ii more dense wood.

Pictures are of the pattern in CW software and the carving itself.

I see what caused the line, it is actually part of the picture......

This video might be of interest: http://support.carvewright.com/tutor...part-2-photos/ Note Joe's comment about carving photos in wood is diffacult to get pleasing results.

A Tips and Tricks on photo carving in wood: http://www.carvewright.com/assets/ti...structions.pdf

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Originally Posted by dbemus

A Tips and Tricks on photo carving in wood: http://www.carvewright.com/assets/ti...structions.pdf

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This is the best technique to easily "carve" a photo in wood. I use quotation marks because you're not really converting a photo to 3D, but creating slightly higher (lighter) and deeper (lower) areas of the photo into depths on the wood (by inverting the image), then effectively staining the lower areas darker to in essence duplicate the photographic process.

A photo doesn't contain actual depth information, so it cannot be easily converted into a true 3D model. When you import a photo to Designer, the dark areas are higher and the light areas are lower. That is because the photo is being treated as a height map.

Attachment 88534

If you try to carve it directly as true 3d, the results are usually disappointing, as the right side of the attached image shows:

Attachment 88533

Notice how different the height map at the left translates into a true 3D image, based on how Designer converts photos into carvings. I created that height map specifically to get the 3D carving that I needed, based on the photo at right and using a drawing program and perhaps an hour of graphic design time. There is no easy or automated way to convert a photo (right) to height map (left) of which I am aware. A talented 3D graphic designer could do it, but with a photo such as yours I expect it would require several hours.

Thanks! All very good information and as I tried a few different techniques. The picture for this carving turned out pretty good (will post a picture once I get done with it finishing it).

What I found was cut out the bodies thus eliminating the background which was causing issues, then turned the color photo into a grey scale, then inverted (this made the faces stick out instead of being recessed).