Guide

How to Prepare a Design Image for Laser Cutting

A converter can only trace what it can see. A clean, clear image becomes an exact cutting file. A poor image loses detail before cutting even starts — thin lines break up, small openings close, and edges come out rough. A few simple steps before you upload will give you a much better file.

Start with clean, flat artwork

The best starting point is simple: a black design on a plain white background, with only two tones — black and white. No grey in between.

That means no shadows across the design, no gradients, no grey paper texture, no watermarks, and no screenshot of a screen. A screenshot often adds blur, extra borders, and text or icons that are not part of the design. The converter may trace those too.

If your artwork sits on a photo background — for example, a pattern shown on a gate, a wall, or a coloured sample — flatten it to black and white first. Keep the design black, make the background plain white, and remove anything that is not part of the cut. If a line should not be cut, it should not be in the image.

Sharp and big enough

Use the biggest, sharpest version you have. If you have the same design in a small copy and a large copy, always send the large one. More pixels give the tracer more real detail to follow.

KraftDXF works best with clean, sharp design images. Blurry or very small images lose fine detail. This is an honest limit, not a setting you can fix later. Sharpening can strengthen edges that already exist, but it cannot invent detail that the blur removed. So a soft photo of fine jali will cut coarser than the original — small leaves may merge, and tight curves may simplify.

Panel size helps too. The same design made at a bigger panel size keeps the webs — the steel left between cuts — thicker and safer. A fine design squeezed into a small panel is much harder to cut cleanly than the same design given more room.

• Send the original file, not a forwarded or compressed copy if you can avoid it.
• Do not upscale a tiny image just to make it look bigger — that adds size, not detail.
• If the tool warns that an image is soft, believe the warning and look for a sharper source.

One panel per image

Send one panel per image. That one rule avoids a lot of bad files.

A photo of a whole gate with three panels mixes everything together: outer borders, hinges, locks, gaps between panels, and the frame. The converter cannot know which lines are the pattern and which are the gate itself, so those extra parts can end up inside your design.

Crop tight to the one panel you want to make. Then leave a solid border or frame around the design, so thin leaves and points are not sliced at the sheet edge. KraftDXF adds a frame for this reason — the default is 30 mm. That border holds the pattern together and keeps edge details safe.

Photographing a panel you already have

Sometimes you do not have artwork. You have a real panel, and you need to copy its design from a photo. Take the photo with care, because the photo becomes the source.

Stand flat and straight in front of the panel, at a right angle to it. Hold the camera parallel to the panel, not tilted up, down, or to one side. Fill the frame with the panel, use even light, and avoid shadows falling across it. Take the photo in daylight if you can, and check that the edges look straight in the picture, not slanted.

An angled photo stretches the design. One side looks larger than the other, proportions come out wrong, and the true scale is unknowable from that photo alone. No converter can undo that stretch with certainty. If you have the original design file, always prefer it over any photo — it will give a faithful result, while a photo is always a second-best source.

Vector file or image?

A vector file and an image are not the same thing, and the difference matters.

A vector file — a DXF, an SVG, or a vector PDF — carries exact lines. Those lines can be used 1:1, at true size, with no guessing. An image is only pixels. Those pixels must be converted into outlines, so the result can never be better than the source image. If the pixels are soft, the outlines will be soft too.

If a designer made your artwork, ask for the file. Ask for the DXF, SVG, or vector PDF, not just a picture of the design. It saves a conversion step, keeps fine detail exact, and avoids every photo problem above. Use an image when that is all you have — just prepare it well, using the steps on this page.

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