Design thy image to be lasered

Step 4: Design thy image to be lasered

Now...onto image design. Depending on what you want to do, this could be simple or really hard. I won't go into a lot of details here, but I will tell you what you're going to need in the end. Want to do the exact images I did? Awesome! Download my Photoshop format files below!

Tips for deigning an image to be lasered:

Each path with the laser should be on a separate layer. In my images, I have a total of 3 layers for each image. One layer is the laser "raster" channel, where the laser will etch away the glaze on the tile to reveal the underlying ceramic.
The second layer is a "vector" channel, where the laser will cut through a mask.
The third layer actually doesn't get cut on the laser at all, but I like to include it to give me some reference for the other 2 layers (so yes, this isn't required either).
I did everything in raster in photoshop, then used the "trace bitmap" feature in Corel Draw to convert the vector channel layer into vector paths. IMO, design is a lot easier if you are just working in 1 program.
I didn't care too much about color when I was doing this - I figured I'd convert it all to black and white at the end, but used various colors at this step just to easily associate one layer with a color.

In the end, you should have several laser layers - One to be vector cut into a mask, one to be rastered into a glaze surface, and one that is just there for reference.