[Thumb]nail portraits - (laser etch your fingernails)

Step 4 Prepare Images.

Now that we've narrowed down our candidates and have them numbered 1 - 5 on each hand. One being the thumb and 5 the pinky you need to gather some images for etching. The basic process is to paint your fingernail with a block backdrop and then etch a contrasting solid image into it. The bolder the character and the more recognizable their face is the better your results will be.

First an important step that I neglected the first time I tried to do this. Measure your fingernail for each graphic. Frank Zappa is going on my middle finger so we need the width to be .56 inches wide. [picture 1] My nails are more long than wide, so making a square this size should work.

Once you have your image open it up in your favorite photo editor. I'm using photoshop, but this type of editing can be easily done with GIMP. You'll need to open your file and change it's size to the width square of your fingernail and up the resolution to 300 at the same time. [picture 2]

Next to make sure that this image will burn away the nail polish you need to turn the file into pure black and white, you do this by thresholding it. [picture 3]

Lastly since we are removing black nail polish and showing a lighter patch of fingernail underneath we will need to invert the image in order to keep the visual effect correct [picture 4 & 5].