Portrait on black anodised aluminium

A portrait of my grandmother on a black anodised plate. Single pass, 100% power, 1200mm/min, 1000 DPI, Stucki dither.

The part that actually mattered

The settings above are almost incidental. What made this work was tonal prep:

1. Greyscale, then compress the tonal range hard — anodising gives you maybe three usable tones, so I lifted blacks to about 25% and pulled highlights to 90%.
2. Local contrast with a large-radius, low-amount unsharp mask. Enough to define the eyes and hair edge without halos.
3. Test at final size on an offcut. My first attempt at 60mm looked great; the same file at 180mm needed less contrast because the dither dots resolve differently.

Failures worth mentioning

Two passes to "make it whiter" ruined the first plate — you break through the anodising into bare aluminium and it goes grey and fuzzy. One pass, always.

Fingerprints show. IPA before, IPA after.