Help for a new newbie...

[poteetjr]

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]

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]

This is the image I imported.

[BobHill]

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.]

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]

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]

That came out very nice, Jon.

Bob

[poteetjr]

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]

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]

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...