Leash & Collar Display Rack – with custom Photo Engraving
Inspired by a beautiful Shetland Sheepdog puppy portrait of Champion Winterset Hy-Verta Razzle Dazzle (by Susan Ferroni-Keleher) – this is the first time I’ve tried to engrave an actual photo.
To do this – I converted the photo to something that approximated a line drawing with Photoshop. There are many great YouTube tutorials on this process – here’s the one I used:
Photoshop Tutorial: How to Transform PHOTOS into Gorgeous, Pencil DRAWINGS
The converted image was then dropped into a bitmap layer in VCarve Pro and sized, cropped, and traced so that in the end – we had vectors. It took about an hour for VCarve Pro to trace the image and then generate the V-Carve / Engraving Toolpath for all the line strokes.
The Sheltie portrait was engraved on a raised pedestal – with over 8 hours of cutting on the CNC machine. When the colors and wash go – the portrait comes to life in spectacular fashion – it really plays B&W photo realistic from a distance.
Total machine time for this job was a little over 10 hours – plus an additional 4 hours of sanding, staining, and finishing. The results are spectacular – worth every minute. Happy Birthday Pam! ;-]
A beautiful and functional 3-dimensional art piece for the Shetland Sheepdog lover.
source