Photo engraving: tonal prep that actually works

A written course on preparing images for wood, anodised metal and slate

4.7(3) 76 downloads

£22.00

Personal licence

Make it for yourself and as gifts. Selling finished items isn't included.

Whitfield Cut Co4 files · 9 followers

Wedding signage and event templates that cut clean first time

About this listing

A written, illustrated course on the part of photo engraving nobody explains: preparing the image so the material can reproduce it.

Why your export looks nothing like your engrave (material dynamic range)
Measuring your material's usable tonal range with a step wedge
Compressing tones deliberately — curves, black point, white point
Local contrast without halos
Choosing a dither: Jarvis, Stucki, Floyd–Steinberg, ordered
Testing at final size, and why a face that works at 80mm fails at 30mm
Material-specific recipes: birch, walnut, anodised aluminium, slate, coated tumbler

Written for diode machines, with notes on where fiber differs.

Excellent content. I'd pay again for a video version, but the PDF is thorough.

Clear, honest and material-first. Recommending it to everyone who posts a muddy photo engrave.

Module 3 alone fixed my anodised photo work. I was exporting full-range images and wondering why the shadows were solid black.