Let’s start some conversation now. I own an awards and sign shop and we just bought a laser and am interested in engraving photographs. I know that there are some programs out there designed to do that (ex. photgrave-i think). Can it be done without a special program? Want to engrave on plaques and glass. How well will it work with glass or should we use sandcarver for glass? Would appreciate any advice.
I use Universal Lasers and CorelDraw and did photos that way, lots of trial and error on every job. Lots of wasted material. Then I got PhotoGrav and would not trade it for anything. Most jobs are done right the first time.
As for the glass I was told to use the cheapest glass in the laser. The cheaper the glass the less lead in the glass. When the lead in glass is hit by the laser it heats up, enough of that and the glass shatters and you take a chance of damaging your mirrors and lens.
Out of curiosity, what are the advantages of PhotoGrav over Corel or Photoshop?
With photograv each picture is done once and it is right, with Coreldraw we would have to tweek the picture and run it through and then tweek again. Very seldom would we get it right the first time. Also photograv is not a stand alone program, after you run the photo through photograv you save the engraving image and then bring that file into coreldraw to run through the laser.