My photograv software just arrived and I followed the instructions from a to z. We are more concerned with doing photographs on wood. The sample image that came with photograv came out great. However, processing my own image gave me hit and miss results still. I did everything, from processing the picture in adobe in 8 bit grayscale, then adjusting the tone curve (my instruction manual had inserts with special instructions for wood ingravings to change the tone curve to a given curve), then processing it in photograv then importing the binary file to coreldraw and printing. The results were not consistent. I tried not applying the given tone curve and manually adjusting brightness and contrast, and a bit more improved results.
For pictures taken with a digital camera, I resized and resampled to 250dpi with photoshop. I have a ULS versalaser VL300 50 watt machine. Does it matter if I cannot adjust speed and power? My driver only lets me adjust intensity.
What could I be doing wrong? I’m not sure what my lens spot size is, but I tried all 3 (.03, .05, .07) and got similar mediocre results.
I am in the Philippines and we don’t have cherry wood but I use it for the settings since the wood we are using closely resembles cherry.
Please help.
First thing you need to get from ULS is the “Advanced Driver” which allows you to set Power and Speed. What you have is a the default “beginners driver” which is pretty weak. The advanced driver will make all the difference. Then all you have to do is dial-in the setting with a little bit of trial and error, and eventually your results will be excellent.
BTW, the docs that come with Photograve are not very good and makes the use of the application more confusing than it really is.
Do you have a ULS versalaser? I have not contacted ULS yet but I heard I would need to attend a training should I want to get the advanced driver?
Hi Harry, Yes, I have a ULS VL 200.
Yes, they want everybody to do some training before they use the advanced driver.
I got around it since I was familiar with lasering before I got my laser. After speaking to my rep a few times he was confident that I would not burn my place down if I started using it.
I would make the effort to get it and have your rep come by to show you how to use it. The default driver is really kind of useless because it’s really under powered. There’s no way you could effectively engrave photos with the default driver.
Thanks for the reply.
I already got the advanced driver yesterday. They emailed it to me. Right now I am going through the 40 plus pages of manual to acclimate myself with the changes from beginners to advanced. However, lasering is my second job as I have a normal 8 to 5 job so I only get to it during the evenings. At first glance it seems a bit too much to learn all the different variables involved especially with the limited time that I have. However, I’m sure I will get to it when the weekend comes along.
My question is, once you installed the new Advanced driver, were you able to still use the beginners driver if you wanted to? Could I easily choose between the old and the new driver every time I send a print job to the laser from corel?
It seems I am still hanging on to the ease of the old drivers.
Hi Harry, you can use the two drivers interchangeably. Just select either the materials driver or the advanced driver for your printer after doing a file print in Corel. When selecting the advanced driver you would go into properties to change your laser settings.
Photo engraving tips:
1) In photoshop check the contrast, you must play little with brightness
2) Then take the same to photograv and play with scales its should not have more dots ( depends on photograph)
3) If u want to check the quality try with lesser power first
4) Do not try on cherry wood, try using some lighter shade of wood it will help you identifying details