Carving photos

[Jason R]

Who here has carved photos of people?

What technique did you use and can you show a picture?

I have been asked to do some very detailed photographs carved on wood/acrylic and I’m having a tough time keeping details.

My current workflow:
Import photo into Photoshop
Set a threshold (this is where I lose some detail)
Export to Illustrator
Use high fidelity tracing (lose some more details but make a path)
Export as .PNG at 900DPI
Import into Aspire

I appreciate all the guidance and look forward to seeing what you all do.

[breslinmr]

There are some really good videos about this topic using aspire on vectric own website and legacy’s website. I’m on the verge off trying but started yet.

[andrew]

If you're using Aspire you don't need to go through all those steps. 
Aspire will import your image directly and create the tool paths straight from the unaltered photo.
This is inverted being a lithophane, but no image tracing or any other steps in other software. 
I used a 1/16" tapered ballnose and it's cut in PVC.
Or, depending on the look you're going for you could play around with "Halftoner" and get some pretty neat results.
It's free here: jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html

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[Jason R]

Oct 23, 2017 13:08:09 GMT andrew said:

If you're using Aspire you don't need to go through all those steps. 
Aspire will import your image directly and create the tool paths straight from the unaltered photo.
This is inverted being a lithophane, but no image tracing or any other steps in other software. 
I used a 1/16" tapered ballnose and it's cut in PVC.
Or, depending on the look you're going for you could play around with "Halftoner" and get some pretty neat results.
It's free here: jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html

To clarify, you invert the colors and carve the picture out with 3D roughing and finishing?

I must get a 1/16 tapered ball nose and try this.

[andrew]

Use the Create Component from Bitmap button on the modeling tab of Aspire to import the bitmap.
To invert it you change the combine mode of the component to Subtract instead of add.
Then pretty much yeah, rouging pass with a 1/8" flat bit then a finishing pass with the 16th ballnose.

I followed this tutorial for lithophanes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3q5Fzb01ls
and this is where I got the tapered ballnose: www.soigeneris.com/precisebits-tapered-carving-tools