Intro

[Christian Fazekas]

Hi, my name is Chris, I'm general manager in my own Germany based startup company. We have one product called the fire cube and it takes me - and our designer - on some crazy learning challenges :banghead:, be it with PS or other stuff. I'm not sure if it's ok to write about these challenges here but if not someone please give me a hint and I'll repost in the right forum.

So the thing is, we would like to offer customized variants of this cube that get's laser cut. This is the most basic version of it: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6_h5IJRZr3cWm1INVR1eVRCWFE
We would like to offer customization likecutting out words, signs or - and this leads to my question - images.
I'll try to illustrate the challenges we facewith some pictures:
[FONT=&amp]This is a typical picture we might want to start with: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6_h5IJRZr3cZWtTQXVpakc3Vlk[/FONT]
We have a CAD program and can easily importvectorized files and just substract the paths from the 3D model of theobject.
What we are still looking for a good (and fast)way to get from the pixelized version to a vectorized one.
Here is what we've tried so far:

• * B/W adjustment looking for best contrast (PS)
  * Threshold adjustment to bring up the right silhouette (PS)
  * Remove unwanted elements (PS)
  * Tracing (AI)
  * Drawing bridges so that some elements don't fall out after laser cutting (AI)

[FONT=&amp]this is the result of said process: http://tinyurl.com/jop3z8q[FONT=&amp]

[/FONT]Here are some problems we faced in the process:[/FONT]

• contrast and brightness manipulation produced too many unwanted edges and left too many unconnected "islands" making the whole process too slow
• bridges connecting the outside material with face details too small. For the material to withstand the heat we need at least 3 mm - again keeping the procedure fast at the same time.

​I understand that this process will always takesome time but I'm sure that you have a ton of ideas to make this more elegantand effective than we have been able. So I kindly ask you to share yourcreativity and ideas with me to help me learn and build a better product.


[FONT=&amp]Please ask for any information that could behelpful![/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Thank you all,[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Chris[/FONT]

 

[Eggy]

The applied effect is called 'pop art'.

Here's a nice tutorial for Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7pQApZ8UtI

For example, I turned this



in a few minutes into (png) using your box template

(make bridges with a brush tool!)

To vectorize use Adobe Illustrator or in my case CorelDraw and use the 'trace bitmap' option to get this and save as EPS (its not that crisp because its a screenshot that turned back into a PNG wich is of course again a bitmap)



You can now import the EPS into your CAD program.

 

[Christian Fazekas]

Hey Eggy, thanks a lot for this idea - but honestly: I'm still laughing hard as I look at Merkel. This is just hillarious. I should produce one of these and send it to her as a gift... Best
Chris