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| Acceptable File Formats |
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| Logos to be engraved into a product must be in the following format to ensure the quality of the image. Please be aware that a laser engraving an image is not the same as printing on it a piece of paper or viewing it on a monitor. If you have any questions about image formats, feel free to call us. |
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- The image can be either a raster or vector image.
- A raster image should be 1 bit black and white camera-ready line art.
- A vector image can be either black and white or gray scale(we will correct the shades of gray).
- Acceptable file formats are:
- TIFF Bitmaps (.tif) - 300 DPI or greater resolution - 1-Bit Black and White Line Art
- BMP Bitmaps (.bmp) - 300 DPI or greater resolution - 1-Bit Black and White Line Art
- Coreldraw (.cdr) - Vector Images (no raster images embedded, or raster images must be 1-Bit Black and White Line Art in 300 DPI or greater resolution)
- Adobe Illustrator (.ai) - Vector Images (no raster images embedded, or raster images must be 1-Bit Black and White Line Art in 300 DPI or greater resolution)
- Encapsulated Postscript(.eps) - Vector Images or Raster Images of 1-Bit Black and White Line Art in 300 DPI or greater resolution)
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| Note for Mac Users: Please be sure you save your file formats in IBM compatible types. If you have any other file format, you may e-mail or call us to see if the image format will work. |
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| Frequently Asked Questions |
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| Question: Can I take a JPG or GIF image from a web site and convert it to the TIFF or BMP rastor image and send it? |
| Answer: No. JPG and GIF images from websites are usually 72 or 96 DPI. They are compressed images designed to provide speed in downloading from the web server to your web browser. Simply converting a JPG or a GIF to a TIFF or a BMP will not work even if you increase the resolution because the image will still not be suitable for engraving. If you send us a JPG or GIF, even if it has been converted to a TIFF, we cannot guarantee the quality of the end product. |
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| Question: What if I don't have the image in a format required for engraving? Can you use what I do have, even if the quality is poor? |
| Answer: Yes, however we cannot guarantee the end results. If you send us a poor quality logo we will let you know so that you can provide us with a better image. We recommend you contact the graphics design or marketing department at your company to see if they have a better image for you company logo. Also, we have a logo library of about 20,000 company logos and your company logo may be one of them. Simply contact us if you cannot find an acceptable file, and we can send you a sample of the logos for your company we have on file. If you still can’t find a better image we can rework your logo for a nominal fee. |
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| Question: I have an image that is Black and White, but it really looks like shades of gray. Is that acceptable? |
| Answer: 1-Bit black and white camera-ready line art means, there are only 2 colors. One color is Black, and other is White. There are no shades of gray. The following is an example of a black and white logo and a grayscale logo. |
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| 1-Bit black and White Example | |
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| Grayscale Example | |
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| As you can see from the examples above the black and white image has no colors,and no shades of gray. The grayscale image has many shades of gray. |
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| If you magnified the grayscale image you will see more of the gray pixels. This image shows the magnification and the many different shades of gray. |
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| The grayscale example image will be something more like the following image if left in grayscale format. This is after the grays are converted to black or white: |
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| As you can see the image loses many of the details and the edges are not sharp. However, the true 1-Bit black and white line art example above will engrave exactly as you see it above with nice sharp edges and no loss of detail. |
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