Introduction

    PhotoGrav has been designed specifically for Laser Engravers. The objective of the program is to efficiently process digitized photographs so they can be engraved on a variety of common engraving materials with a high degree of confidence that the engraved photographs will be acceptable products.

    Traditionally, the engraving of photographs has been difficult and has been a hit or miss endeavor resulting in many discarded objects. The process has been so difficult and costly, in fact, that many Engraving shops simply do not offer engraved photographs as one of their standard products. PhotoGrav has been designed to address this problem and does so in three ways:

1. It provides a set of powerful tools that have been found effective in processing photos for engraving.
2. It provides an automated application of these tools to the subject photo.
3. It provides a simulation of the engraving process for many common materials so the “engraved product” can be inspected before it is actually engraved.

    Currently, PhotoGrav simulates more than 25 engraving materials including: cherry and walnut wood; clear and black-painted acrylic; black laser brass and anodized aluminum; a variety of generic leather materials; and many plastics with either a white or black core and with a variety of caps including brushed gold and most solid colors. PhotoGrav’s processing functions have been tuned and optimized for each of these materials and the appropriate optimized parameters are automatically loaded whenever a new material is selected. Further, PhotoGrav automatically compensates for the engraving peculiarities of each material in the process of creating the “engraver-ready” processed image. For example, photos to be engraved on clear acrylic are automatically mirror-imaged and produced at a “negative” polarity. Of course, you can override these automatic features at any time to produce special effects if so desired.

    The PhotoGrav process is very simple: (1) You select the digitized image that you want to engrave, (2) You select the engraving material, and (3) You choose the Final Processing option within PhotoGrav. The next thing you see on your computer monitor is a simulation of what the image will look like when it is actually engraved on the material you have chosen. You can then save the image on disk and use your favorite image processing program, e.g., CorelDraw, to send the image to the engraver.

    Of course, the simulated engraving might not look quite like you wanted so instead of saving the image on disk you can reprocess the image by “tweaking” the parameters that PhotoGrav had originally chosen for the image. Most of the time, however, the automated processing in PhotoGrav is so good that you won’t be able to improve on the automated rendition no matter how long you tweak.

    Using an energy and lens model, PhotoGrav has been calibrated for many laser engravers from the major manufacturers. However, PhotoGrav goes one step further in that it provides the capability that allows you to customize and automate PhotoGrav’s processing for your particular machine and for the particular materials that you use.

    As a final note, we would like to point out that PhotoGrav has NOT been designed in a vacuum by computer scientists who have merely a passing acquaintance with a laser engraver. Rather, it has been designed by a team of engravers, physicists, and computer scientists who have pooled their experience, knowledge, and talents to result in a truly unique and remarkable product for the laser engraving community. This team wishes you all possible success in using PhotoGrav and welcomes your comments for improvements to future PhotoGrav versions.