Now that we have removed the background it is time to adjust out image. We are back in CorelDraw and our image has a transparent background thanks to use using the cutout lab in Corel PhotoPaint

When you are in the contrast enhancement command you need to make sure that some settings are set. First of all make sure that the preview window is selected so we can see the before and after images (1). The original window is on the left (2). The preview window is on the right (3). Select the Lock button (4) to engage the preview. Click reset so that any presets we used before are cleared (5). The histogram (6) indicates our spatial concentration of pixels in our image. The dark pixels are on the left and the white pixels are on the right. Our adjustment sliders are the triangles above the histogram. The left slider (7) creates more darker contrast. The right slider (8) creates more contrast to the white. The gamma adjustment (9) shifts the entire image either lighter or darker.

I adjust the two sliders inwards to increase the contrast of the image. It is very important usually on any photo to increase the contrast as this increases the chances of creating a good looking photo. What I am looking to do typically is to create some white in the traditional areas of the photo that are blown out by a flash or any light. These are highlighted by the red circles in the original image. The preview image is on the right. Note: because we are doing this photo on glass (or black granite) the image needs to be inverted. Because of this what is white becomes black and black becomes white. Typically for 99% of the photos I do I need to lighten the image up. Thus because I have to invert the photo the image has to be darker when I adjust. This is so important to remember. In this case I am doing the exact opposite if I was doing the image on wood. But remember you still need to create more contrast. I have done this in the photo. There are good white areas and good dark areas. Typically on a wood image I would not do much adjustment to the dark area of the photo.

Go to BITMAP | SHARPEN (1) | UNSHARP MASK (2)

Typically I use a Percentage of 500 (1) when I am doing glass or wood or granite. The Radius will number in this case is 4 (2) but you need to adjust this one according to the photo that you are using.

The next step is to select BITMAP (1) | MODE (2) | BLACK AND WHITE (3).

Select one of the 3 error diffusion settings. Jarvis, Stucki or Floyd Steinburg. All three are fine.

I have chosen Floyd Steinburg. The only other adjustment is the intensity slider. You can choose this to change the spacing of the dots.

Here is my finished image. Now all we have to do is invert it. Did not take a lot of time and now I see exactly what I want and it costs me nothing.

To Invert the image select EFFECTS (1) | TRANSFORM (2) | INVERT (3).

Our image is inverted and now can be sent to the laser machine. For a further video on lasering glass see this link or this link on lasering photographs

Hopefully as you can see the photograph has lasered quite well on the glass. Note: The one thing that you have to remember is that you need to mask the glass. For a further explanation on this technique visit my Lasering Glass Video.

Here is the photograph pictured from behind as I look through the glass

Just to make sure that I am not not using a good image here is another one

Here is our photo after we fixed it up. We had to clone out some bad rips and folds in the original image.

Select the photo and right click on it  and select edit bitmap (1). This will open the image up in Corel PhotoPaint

With the image open in Corel Photo Paint select IMAGE (1) CUTOUT LAB (2).

With the image in the cutout lab we can now work to cutout the image. First we need to outline the area of the photo that we want to keep. To out line the image we will use a marker. The marker or pen is located at the top right (1). If you want to make the nib large or smaller you can enter in the size under “Nib Size” (2). The default colour of the line that the pen draws is lime green (3). This can be changed to suite the photo.

A nib size of 20 (1) gives you a nib or brush size that is a little small for this image (2) – round circle.

To get better coverage I changed my nib size to 45 (1). My nib is now thicker than 20 (2).

Before we start we need to zoom in to make our drawing more accurate. I will select the zoom in button (1). Click and drag an area to zoom into.

If you zoom in you will need to click back on the marker or pen tool (1). Select 45 (2) and keep green (3).

Draw a line from the bottom of the photo (1) to the top of your window (2). The line is green and it is half on our image and half off our image.

Continue to draw the line around the image. Make sure that the line is uninterrupted. Do not worry about letting go of the mouse. You can do this and start again. If you press the “H” key you will be able to pan the photo by clicking on the photo and holding down the mouse button and moving the photo to get to an area that needs to be drawn on.

If you make a mistake you can erase the mistake with the eraser (1) and than start drawing again.

We have now outlined our image. The green line indicates the area we want to keep and the area we want to get rid of.

We need to tell PhotoPaint what we want to keep and what we want to discard. We do this by filling what we want to keep. So select the fill tool (1).

If you do not take your green lines right to the edge of the page (1) and (2) when you fill with the fill tool you will fill the whole image. This is no good. We need to close off those areas by selecting the line tool and extending the line to the bottom of the photo.

Our Image fills right because only the inside is filled blue.

The actual cutout is very good and we only have 3 areas that need to be addressed.

First off all to make it easier zoom into the area that needs to touched up. We need to bring some detail back that was taken away. Select the “Add Detail” brush (1). We are now going to click on the area that needs to be touched up.

When the add detail brush is activated your cursor will change into a round shape. You can now drag over the area the needs to be brought back. Hold the left mouse button down and drag and than release.

We have now brought our detail back to the image.

To get rid of some detail you can click on the remove detail brush in the tool (1).

I want to get rid of the middle section also. I can do this by selecting the brush tool and tracing around the middle area (1).

The Middle is now traced out and I can fill in the photos with the Fill tool.

This took 3 minutes to do. I have gotten rid of the background around the two ladies (1) and also the area that is in the middle (2).

To help you see any “extra” detail that you have missed in the background you can change the background colour to black (2), gray or white (1).

Here is the same image with a gray background

Our background has now been removed

To transfer the image back to CorelDraw got o FILE (1) | FINISH EDITING (2) or SAVE (3). This depends on what version of Corel that you are using.

Our Image has now been transferred to CorelDraw. You can now close PhotoPaint.

Create a page in CorelDraw that is 6.0 by 3.0. You will notice that I have places some descriptive text at the top of the page (2).

Here is the file my dealer got from their customer. There are 20 columns of names. each Column needs to have a descriptive name. In this case it is NAM01 and so forth.
NOTE: remember that CorelDraw will not condense names. Thus you need to figure out how many letters you can get on a line without the line flowing past the page margins (you could do an envelope so maybe I will address that in another tutorial). So pick your font size and figure out how many characters can go on a line and tell the customer to work within these parameters.

Here is the excel file in close up view. Notice that the first cell has the identifier text NAM01 (1). The text is in the fields below. The next column has the next identifier NAM002 (3). It does not have be NAM01 it can be any descriptive name that you want.
Note: Once the file has been checked close it down.

Got to File (1) | Print Merge (2) | Create/Load Merge Fields (3).

Select “Import text from a file or an ODBC data source” (1). Click next (2)

Select “ODBC Data Source” and then select “Select ODBC Data Source”

First click on the “Machine Data Source” tab (1). Next double click on the “Excel Files” name (2).

Select the directory where the file is (1). In this case My Documents. Next double click on the file name (2) in this case PLTALL.xls. Or click once and click “Ok”. Click next.

The PTALL file is selected (1). The Column window shows the 20 columns that where in excel that are being imported into Corel (2). Select Ok (3).

Select Next (1)

You can see that the columns are imported (1). The field type is text (2). Click Next (1).

Here is the text displayed in the Merge Wizard. You can see the merge fields listed on the top (1). The names are all listed in the body (2). Note: you can spell check or change any of the names here if you want. You can also choose not to bring in a name by unchecking the name name (3). Click Next (4).

Select Finish (1). This will end the wizard.

The print merge toolbar becomes active. We now need to start inserting our merge fields. Our Name field is NAM01 and we are going to insert it onto the CorelDraw document that we created using the insert command (1).

When you insert a merge field the field takes the name of the field that was created originally in Excel. This is why it is always advisable to make sure that you chose a name that is descriptive of the data that is coming in. For example if you where bringing in data that related to a position in a company such as sales use the field identifier name “Company Position”. This way you know what is in the field.

Select all the 10 lines of text and make text left justified. Because there are two columns here I am going to make the lines left justified. If I was doing only one column I would probably just leave it at center justified.

I have placed a .25 inch margin on the plate using guidelines. Place the 10 lines somewhat like I have them. Now place the top line – Name 01 at the edge of the top guideline (1) and the bottom line – Name 10 at the edge of the bottom guideline (2). Also make sure that each line is touching the left guideline (turn on “snap to guideline”).

Select all your text. We are going to left justify the text. After that we will be aligning it and than distribute it

Select Arrange (1) | Align and Distribute (2) | Align and Distribute (3).

Select “Align (1) and than “left (2). Click “Apply (3). This will left justify all the text.

Select the Distribute Tab (1). Next select Center (2). We are now going to evenly distribute the 10 select lines evenly. I am using the top and the bottom lines as the extent of where this distribution is going to be. Click Apply (3). You changes will take place and the box stays open. Click Close (4)

Here is our finished layout. I have 10 names in the first column and 10 names in the second column. I am now ready to do my merge.

Select Merge to New Document (1) if you are a user of X4 or X5. If you are a user of X3 or less select Print in the print merge toolbar (2) and proceed to the imposition layout in the print menu located later in this tutorial.

CorelDraw will than proceed to create a new document called printmerge1 that is comprised of a number of pages. each page has a new set of names on it. In this case each new page has 20 new names on each page. If we only had one merge field than we would only have one new name per page.

You can see from the number of pages that I have created 268 pages (1). Each page created has 20 names. Thus I have a total of 286 x 20 names which means I have a total of 5720 names.

Some of the lines are to long so they need to be condensed. You can select each line individually and condense each one but the problem is you will get lines that will look different from each other.

Select VIEW (1) | SNAP TO GUIDELINES (2)

Some of the lines are to long so they need to be condensed. You can select each line individually and condense each one but the problem is you will get lines that will look different from each other.

If we condense the lines that are going past the guidelines than we end up with lines that look different than the non condensed lines. It is thus better to condense them together

Now we need to select all the text in the left column. Next click on the right middle selection handle (1) – green arrow and while holding down the mouse button drag left (red line). With the snap to guidelines on the text will snap to the guideline.

You can see that now each line in each column is justified the same. The text looks a lot better now.

Select File (1) Print (2).

Select Your Laser (1)

Select Your Page Size which in this case is 24 by 12.

Select the Layout tab (1). In Versions older the layout table is right beside the General Tab. Than select Edit (2).

The imposition command allows us to take our 286 pages and group them into bigger pages. Thus we can do more than one plate at a time. In this case my big plate is 24 by 12 which I setup in my print setup for my laser or sublimation printer. Now I am going to put a bunch of 6 by 3′s on a 24 by 12 inch plate. If I divide this number I will get 4 across (4 x 6 = 24) and 4 down (4 x 3 = 12). Thus I can get 16 plates per multiple. You can see from my screen shot I have 16 plates. Note: Make sure that the numbers are exact if you use to many plates they will fit on the big plate but make them smaller.

To preview the job click on the “Document Preview” (1)

You can see that I have 16 plats per page. Note: for this example I did not condense all the names on the pages. I will let my dealer do that. Select the check mark (1).

Select Print to send the job to your laser or you sublimation printer. Note: Sure is nice I did not have to type in 5700 names. Sure speeds up this job.

Here we have an image of some horses with the rockie mountains as a back drop

The resolution of our image is 228 by 228. For a laser it should not fall below 100 dpi. For sublimation I would keep this number at about 200dpi

The size of our image is 8.771 by 6.578. Let us assume we are using 3 by 3 inch tiles. For this excursive I want to use an image that is 15 inches by 12 inches. Thus we need 5 tiles long (5 x 3) and 4 tiles high (4 X 3). Before we can go on we need to make our image 15 by 12 with a resolution of 100 if we are doing it on a laser machine.

The problem is if we just drag our image and make it bigger than our resolution will be to small. To reduce the effect of enlarging the image we will use the resample command (1) that is found in CorelDraw.

First of all make sure that the image size will retain the original aspect ratio (1). Type in a width of 15 (2). You will notice that the height goes to 11.25 (3) automatically which is to small for the 12 that we need. As I only need 150 DPI i have entered this in for the Horizontal (4) and the vertical (5) resolution. Notice that the file size has increased in as per the red box. Make sure that you have unchecked "anti-alias (6). What I need to do is to enter in 12 for the height.

First enter in 12 for the height. (1) This will change width to 16 (2). Click on "OK"

We need to crop the image down to 15 by 12. We do this by selecting the crop tool (1)

While holding down your left mouse button drag and create a selection or crop box. Do not worry about the size we will correct this in the next step

First we need to type in 15 for the width (1) and 12 for the height (2). Press enter.

Place the selection box on top of the original image. Remember that anything outside the box will be gone once we accept the crop.

Double click on the selection or crop box to accept the crop.

Go to the toolbox and select the Graph Paper (1). The hot key is "D"

As per the beginning of this article we know that we are creating 3 by 3 tiles. Thus we need 4 tiles tall and 5 tiles wide. Type in 4 for the height (1) and 5 for the width (2).

While holding down your left mouse button drag and create the stock graph paper

We should have a setup as per the above.

Select the graph paper and type in 15 wide (1) and 12 (2) tall.

First we need to select the graph and the picture together. Drag a selection box around the two. Press the letters "C" and than "E". This will center the two.

Press the Tab button until the picture is selected. You will know the picture is selected as the pictures name is at the bottom in the status bar

Select EFFECTS (1) | POWERCLIP (2) | PLACE INSIDE CONTAINER (3).

When you select "Place Inside Container" your cursor will change into a black arrow. Click inside the Gird, This means that we want the grid to powerclip our photo

If you get this error message than you did not have the photo selected. Click "No" go back and make sure the photo is selected and repeat.

Make sure that you have the powerclipped image and grid selected. Now go to ARRANGE (1) | UNGROUP(2).

You can now separate the image from each of the other grids. Notice that the grid that I selected is a 3 by 3 grid (1), Now all I have to do is to remove the pen outline.

Make sure that the 3 by 3 image is still selected. Than select the Pen tool (1). Than None (2).

You can see that my picture is 3 by 3 and it has now outline. Now we can laser the image onto tiles or sublimate the image onto tiles

If you do not want to worry about over spray and are working in a small area than laser tape may be for you. It typically requires a little more power than the spray but the labour saving can quickly offset that.

For optimum mark quality, good adhesion and contact between the tape and the substrate is necessary. The tape must stick well to the substrate. If gaps or air bubbles are trapped between the tape and the substrate, poor mark quality will result. Use moderate pressure to insure good contact. Use of a squeegee will help insure good contact. Rough or uneven substrates such as porous non-glazed ceramics or bricks will also produce marks of lower resolution due to the roughness of the material

Some burning of the paper backing will occur during marking and is normal. We recommend that the marking be done in a well ventilated area. When making large marks or a large quantity of marks, we recommend a ventilation system to exhaust the smoke created from the paper burning to the outside. Marking may require some trial and error to optimize your laser with a particular substrate. Keep in mind that all lasers react differently depending on the substrate. Best results are obtained when marking at lower powers and slower speeds. High powers tend to damage glass substrates and should be avoided whenever possible. Experimentation should be done to find settings that produce an acceptable mark without glass damage.

No preparation is necessary, use LMM-6018 tape as supplied.

Product must be stored in cool and dry conditions. Storage temperatures should be between 40ºF (5ºC) and 95ºF (35ºC). If stored as recommended, a minimum shelf life of six months after the production date is guaranteed.

First we need to import our photo in CorelDraw

Our next step is to convert our image to grayscale. I do this for 3 reasons. The first is because our laser is going to convert the image to grayscale during the printing process we might as well work in grayscale ourselves. Also a grayscale image is 3 times smaller in file size than a coloured image. Thus our computer will process the image faster. Thirdly and most importantly when i do my adjustments to my photo the adjustments that I make will be seen better with the grayscale image than with the coloured image.
Select BITMAP | MODE | GRAYSCALE to convert our image to grayscale from colour.

Our next step is to adjust the photo so that we can increase the contrast in our image. (For a more detailed article on increasing the contrast in an image see my article on increasing contrast in a photograph). Select EFFECTS | ADJUST | CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT COMMAND. See Figure 4

Figure 5 shows the contrast command opened. You need to “unlock” (1) the preview to allow you to preview the image. The original image is the left preview pane and the right preview window previewing what the original image is going to look like. If you can not see the preview windows click on the two little boxes at the top left hand corner identified as 2. Click the reset button to reset the command to its defaults (3).
The Histogram (4) shows us the spatial concentration of pixels in our image. The darker part of the image is the left side of the histogram and the right side is the lighter side of the image.

Once you have set up the previous window we can now make some adjustments to the image. Before I actually adjust the image let me point out a couple of commands that need to be identified in the window.
1. Auto -adjust – this adjusts the image automatically and is not something that we want to do typically
2. Shadow Adjustment – allows us to increase or decrease the shadow detail in our image
3. High Light Adjustment – allows us to increase or decrease the high light detail in our image
4. Gama Adjustment – Lets you accentuate the detail in low contrast areas without affecting the shadows or highlight areas
5. Samplers. Allows us to base our adjustments on sampled colours

Now that we know what each command is for let us look at what happens when we adjust the image. When we are working with the laser the two sliders we are concerned with are number 2 and 3 in our previous image. The slider for the shadows of our image (2) cause the darker parts of our image to become darker. The highlight slider (3) allows our lighter parts of our image to become lighter. You can see these in the previous figure.
Before we adjust the image we need to know what we are going to laser this image onto. This is because we will adjust the appropriate slider depending on what colour the finished image is going to be. In this example we will look at doing this image on a wood thus what is black will laser and what is white will not. This means that I will adjust the highlight slider more than the shadow slider.
To lighten the lighter part of the image slide the highlight slider to the left as per the next figure. You can see that the histogram is adjusting right and is becoming longer. This means that I am increasing the contrast of the image. The preview window shows me my adjustment (2).
Note: make sure that you lighten the image like mine in the figure below. Do not worry that the image is too white it will be fine. I need to create some distinction between the white and dark pixels. The red ovals indicate that areas that I want to go white. Also look at lightening up the chin.
If you want you can adjust the gamma so that the number becomes larger (say somewhere around 1.15). This will lighten up the whole image.

Our next step is to click on OK after the image is adjusted. Our next figure shows the adjustment

Our next step is to sharpen our image by using the Unsharp command. Sharpening eliminates some of the shading in our image that will interfere with the look of our image. What the sharpening does is increase the contrast between the white and dark areas of the image by tricking our eyes. To sharpen our image go to BITMAP | SHARPEN | UNSHARP MASK.

The next figure shows the unsharp command opened. Again as in the contrast command click on the “lock” icon (1) so that any changes made will show in the preview window. If you can not see the preview window open it up by click on the 2 little squares at the top left hand window (2). Now take your Percentage slider (3) to 500 and your radius to 10 (4). Note: I typically move my percentage to 500. It is my radius that I need to be careful with as this can greatly effect your image.

Click the OK button. Note: just remember that the amount of your adjustments will differ depending on your image and what wood you are going onto. It is best that you spend some time practicing.

Next we need to convert our image to black and white by using an error diffusion algorithm. Note your laser manufacturer has this built into their software but as usual I suggest you take this step as you can than see what is going to happen. First go to BITMAP | MODE | BLACK AND WHITE.

Our next figure shows us the black and black and white command. First make sure that you can see the preview images in the command. If not as per the last steps click on the two small boxes at the top left hand window (1). Next from the pull down window select the “Floyd Steinberg”, “Jarvis” or “Stucki algorithms” (2). Adjust the intensity depending on the image (3).

Once you are done click on the Ok button. Our next image shows the final image. Note: The image will look bad on your screen as the zoom level needs to be exact for it to display properly. This is why you need to make sure that you look at the image in the preview window.

Note: The coarser the wood the less printed resolution that you should use. For example if you are going on alder you may want to use 400 DPI. But on oak you may want 250. The coarser the wood the lower the resolution that you need to use.

Here are two examples of the image lasered on wood at 600 dpi and 400 dpi same powers and speeds on both