EtchWeave Studio

EtchWeave Studio converts any photograph into a laser-engravable vector artwork in seconds. You upload a photo, choose from 13 engraving styles, adjust a handful of sliders, and export a laser-ready SVG or 300 DPI PNG — all inside one browser window, no design skills or software installation required.

How it works

Upload a photograph, choose an engraving style, fine-tune the settings, and export a laser-ready SVG or 300 DPI PNG — all in one browser window, no software to install.

Step 1 — Upload your photo Drag a photo onto the dropzone or click to browse. Portrait Engraver automatically detects your image's aspect ratio and sets the canvas to the nearest preset: portrait (150 × 212 mm), square (150 × 150 mm), landscape, or wide. You can override the print width in mm at any time using the header input.

Step 2 — Choose an engraving style Pick from 13 distinct patterns. Each reads the luminance of your photograph and translates light and shadow into vector marks:

• Contour Flow — horizontal lines that vary in width, thicker where the image is darker. Classic and readable at any scale, the best starting point for most portraits.
• AM Dots — angled halftone dots, smaller in bright areas and larger in dark areas. The traditional printing-press look.
• Whorls — concentric rings deformed by the image gradient. Automatically rendered as a circular artboard, ideal for coasters and medallions.
• Guilloché— complex harmonic wave rows with multiple layered frequencies, like banknote engraving.
• Stipple — randomised dots at variable density. Handles gradual skin tones and soft gradients better than any line-based mode.
• Topo Lines— iso-luminance bands that appear only at specific tonal values, creating a topographic map effect across the portrait.
• Herringbone — chevron zigzag rows that vary in line width.
• Flow Field — gradient-following pen strokes that trace the edges of your subject. Choose from four sub-styles in the Weave tab: Streamlines, Curl, Sketch, and Radial. The Sketch sub-style adds organic noise for a hand-drawn look.
• Wave Grid — sinusoidal horizontal rows — tight and flat in bright areas, wide and pronounced in dark areas.
• Radial Burst — rays from a central point, thickening over dark areas. Circular artboard. Best on centred subjects.
• Crossfield — two diagonal hatching layers at different tonal thresholds, one finer and one coarser.
• Phyllotaxis — golden-angle spiral dot arrangement, identical to sunflower seed packing. Circular artboard.
• Brick Wave — offset alternating sine rows for an architectural pattern feel.

Step 3 — Adjust in the Weave and Tone tabs The Weave tab shows 2–3 sliders specific to your chosen style — spacing, line width, edge detail, flow style, wave amplitude, or dot size. Changes appear in under 20 ms.

The Tone tab gives you brightness, contrast, gamma, blur (smooth), and invert. These update instantly without re-sampling the image, so you can dial in the tonal range before finalising the style.

Step 4 — Set canvas size and shape The Canvas tab lets you switch between Square and Circle artboard shapes. Whorls, Radial Burst, and Phyllotaxis automatically force a circular artboard because their patterns are inherently radial — the shape toggle is hidden for those modes. You can also switch between Monochrome and Colour mode; in Colour mode each stroke picks up the RGB value from the source photograph.

Step 5 — Export

• SVG — laser-ready vector file. All paths are sized in real millimetres so what you see in the preview prints at exactly the physical size you specified. Open in LightBurn, xTool Creative Space, or any laser software and use fill-engraving mode.
• PNG — 300 DPI raster at your specified mm size. Ready for Photoshop, Canva, or direct print. In Colour mode only PNG is available.

Use the ↓ JSON toolbar button to save your current settings (style, spacing, tone, canvas size) as a preset file. Share it with a customer, reload it later, or use it as the starting point for a variation.

Engraving style guide

Tips for best results

• High-contrast portraits with a plain or dark background engrave most clearly. The tool reads light and shadow directly — if your photo is flat and low-contrast, use the Tone tab to push brightness and contrast before picking a style.
• The print width defaults to 150 mm. For wood coasters, 90–100 mm is more practical. For wall plaques, 200–250 mm gives more line detail.
• If the preview looks too dark overall, reduce brightness by –10 to –20 in the Tone tab.
• For Whorls and Phyllotaxis on circular pieces, match the print width to the diameter of your material exactly.
• Flow Field works best on images with strong directional texture — hair, fabric folds, dramatic lighting.
• Export SVG for laser use. Export PNG for proofing, mockups, or DTF/UV print.

Craft tags

LASER: ✅ Engraving
PRINT (optional): Ink Print, DTF & DTG (Colour PNG mode)

Sample images included in this listing

The 34 gallery renders above were generated using these 10 source photographs through Portrait Engraver. Every output is from a single click — no post-processing was applied.