Preparing your artwork

Vector versus raster

Vector artwork is drawn with lines and curves, so it can be scaled to any size and still cut or engrave with a crisp edge. Raster artwork is made of pixels, and the laser reproduces it as shading, so its quality depends entirely on how many pixels it has.

Cut lines, outlines and crisp lettering need vector artwork. Photographs and painterly images are always raster, and that is fine — they are engraved as tone rather than line.

Preferred production files

These give us the cleanest result and rarely need rework:

• PDF — as long as the contents were made as vector artwork
• SVG — good for logos and lettering
• AI — Adobe Illustrator working files
• EPS — older vector exchange format, still widely used
• LightBurn project files — including LBRN2 and LBRN files — can also be uploaded and will be kept as supplied.

Reference files we can work from

Send whatever you have. Reference files are useful for showing us what you want, even when they cannot be used for production directly.

• JPG and PNG — photographs, screenshots, existing signage
• HEIC — straight from an iPhone
• Sketches, phone photos and marked-up documents

Why a JPG placed in a PDF is still not vector

A PDF is a container. If a photo or a screenshot of a logo is dropped into a page and saved as a PDF, the file extension changes but the artwork inside is still pixels.

Saving, exporting or renaming never converts pixels to line work. The only way to get vector artwork from a pixel image is for someone to redraw it. That is what our artwork cleanup covers.

What good and poor artwork looks like

The difference is usually visible before anything reaches the laser.

• Good: crisp edges at full zoom, solid black shapes on a plain background, text either outlined or supplied with the font
• Good: a photo taken square-on in even light, large enough to fill the finished size
• Poor: a logo lifted from a website, blurry or soft at the edges when zoomed in
• Poor: a screenshot with compression speckle around the lettering
• Poor: pale grey or colour-only detail that disappears once it is a single engraved tone

Photo resolution

A good target is about 300 pixels for every finished inch. This is a working guideline, not a strict requirement: a piece 8 inches wide would ideally use an image roughly 2400 pixels across.

Enlarging a small image does not add detail. If the file you have is small, tell us the finished size you need and we will say plainly whether it will hold up.

Fonts

Convert text to outlines or curves before sending, or send the font file with your artwork so we can set the text exactly as you intended.

Without either, fonts substitute silently and your layout shifts. If you cannot do either, tell us the font name and we will confirm whether we have it.

Thin lines and fine detail

The beam has a width, and every material spreads heat a little differently. Very thin strokes can vanish, and very small counters — the holes inside letters like a, e and o — can fill in.

Small text and hairline rules are the first things to suffer. When a design has to be reduced, we will tell you what will be lost before we produce it.

Material limits

Every material behaves differently, and the same artwork will not look identical across all of them.

• Wood: grain and colour vary piece to piece, and the burn tone varies with it
• Slate and stone: strong contrast, but fine detail softens on a natural surface
• Leather: engraves darker and tends to close up very fine lines
• Coated metal and acrylic: can hold very fine detail, depending on the material, coating and finished size
• Hats and patches: stitch and weave set a practical limit on small lettering

Rights to logos, photos, fonts and trademarks

When you send artwork you are confirming that you have the right to have it reproduced. That covers company logos, photographs, licensed fonts, trademarks and anything under copyright.

We may ask for confirmation or evidence that you have permission to reproduce protected artwork, and we may decline work where appropriate rights cannot be confirmed.

Materials we cannot work with

For safety, we do not cut, engrave or accept PVC or vinyl materials of any kind, including customer-supplied material. Please contact us before supplying any material if you are unsure what it contains.

• PVC
• Vinyl

Artwork cleanup

Some products include an artwork setup fee for preparing customer artwork for production. If your artwork requires more involved cleanup, redrawing or reconstruction, we will let you know before proceeding. Any additional artwork charge will be clearly shown and approved before that work begins.

Free artwork pre-check

Not sure what you have? Send the file with your request and ask for a pre-check. We will tell you whether it is usable as-is, what it will look like at your finished size, and what cleanup would cost if it needs any.