What may not be apparent however, is quite how much hard work it is to engrave a photograph onto stone, granite, marble, or even wood and glass. Read on to find out more . . .

The hard work doesn’t actually occur at the engraving stage as much as it does during the preparation, for it’s all about translating a photograph into a high quality “black and white” image that the laser engraver can read. The amount of attention and skill that is required to produce this artwork for the laser engraving machine is therefore very dependent on the quality of the photograph that we receive.

Every tiny aspect of a photograph had to be scrutinised in order to understand how best to translate the image into an engraving, from the clarity of special features through to colour of the background. The engraving machine reads black as the deepest cuts, and shades of grey as varying depths, and as most photographs to be engraved come to us in colour, we have to ensure that when converted to black and white the details are not lost in a big bundle of black and grey.

When people approach us in search of custom laser engraved photographs in Brisbane they sometimes don’t expect an artwork fee that pops up in their quote. We’re a small business with no hidden extras, and due to the expertise needed to translate a photo accurately into an engraving an artwork fee is necessary…

We can convert digital prints or printed enlargements into custom engravings, so whether your nana or your little one took the photo we can engrave a unique gift from it!

There was one recent photograph for engraving that we did which gave us a good challenge! It was a printed colour photo which – by engraving standards – was of very poor quality. However we were determined to make it work for an engraving onto a black granite panel. One of the biggest challenges in this instance was converting the background so as to ensure that the face stood out clearly, and after a bit of tweaking here and there we had success!

With great happiness, the finished result of this engraved photograph onto granite was very well received. The artwork fee was $100, which we believe was a very fair price for the time and effort that went into getting the image just right.

So if you’re trying to find a photograph engraving specialist in Brisbane – or Australia in fact! – we’d love to hear about your project, no matter how large or small it may be. We can work from either a physical photograph or a digital image, and are happy to work closely with you to achieve your desired outcome.

We’ll keep you posted on any more interesting engraved photo jobs that we do here at Grand & Grave, and in the meantime we look forward to hearing about your engraving needs!