Making Hair in Art look Better.

[crazy^millman]

I got a picture of a Person with alot of Hair and they are the back of a Motor Cycle. I am trying to make the Hair look like more than a Glob. What are the tips or Tricks anyone has used to make it look better?

[Jay M]

Ron,

 

I would try editing the image in Photoshop or a different image editor. Don't worry about the picture looking good, what I would shoot for would be maximum contrast. I have found that Art seems to work better with photos that have large contrast and a minimum of fine detail. You might focus on making the hair appear "broader" with a substantial radius in an unsharp mask filter. If you would like me to play with the photo, feel free to email it to me at

[email protected]

[Kannon]

Ron,

have to agree with Jay.. contrast is everything!

when I ran a laser engraving business we used Corel Draw and photopaint. The worst to try and engrave was a blonde in a white wedding dress standing in the sun. NEED CONTRAST!

Photoshop or Photopaint are excellent softwares for photo editing. If she has black hair and you have some photo imaging software, add a fade to the line thickness and put in a few soft lines of a lighter color to help highlight her hair.

I found out it dosent matter how the looks of the photo look on the screen, its how you cheat it to engrave like the photo.

I can only imagine Art is detecting the same thing.

Good luck, and I agree with contrast being everything.

[crazy^millman]

OK I will give that a try. I got this for Demo and I am very impressed with that it can do. If I can get this project figured out I might have a buddy that is going to get this so he can do a little business he has on the side.

 

I appeircate the tip and will let you know how it turns out.

[Joel Walker]

Use Adobe illustrator CS2 they have a tool called live trace, it converts images to vectors & works way better then the translator for Mastercam (no offence CNC Software) save it as a .eps or .ia file and import it

[cadcam]

Joel, have you used the raster to Vector in Art much more control compared to the raster to vec standalone in V9?

[Jeremy Haage from MCAM NorthWest]

I don't know if this will help you with this particular issue, but I have found (with my limited use of Art) that the Edit > Filters... is a great tool. Try using the Smoothing inside the Filters dialog box. I've had it make almost unrecognizable images become really nice after using this.

[Iven May]

Hey Crazy, I would go with Ron's solution, I have had the same problem. The trick is to fix the picture before you bring it into Art. I have had success with PaintShop Pro from Jasc.com. You can get a 30 day review and if you buy it is only $129. I believe Adobe just bought them.

 

Contrast is the issue, you can take care of it by simply painting in highlights on the original graphic.

 

In Mastercam, on the Grayscale Conversion Dialog, using Alternate Garyscale will up the contrast as well as checking the Maximize Contrast check box. You may also get an improved result by using Custom Color Weighing, set all the sliders to 50% then play witht the gama slider.

 

Finally remember you could draw in detal splines, then use Art-Swept to raise and lower strands.

 

I would like to see this project when your done. Or if you need more help, you can contact me at [email protected]

 

ive