Photo to relief — a picture carved into a printable panel
A bas-relief is a photo you read with your eyes and your fingertips: brightness becomes height, so the picture stands out of a flat panel in a few millimetres. This page starts at 80 mm wide with 2 mm of carving over a 2 mm back, sampled finely enough that your nozzle is the limiting factor.
Model
Turns the whole photo into a raised surface, like a coin or bas-relief.
Relief
Base & mounting
Tips
- Logos and icons trace best from high-contrast black-on-white artwork — drag Threshold until the preview matches the shape you want.
- Photos belong in Relief mode; tracing a photo produces confetti, not a model.
- Keychains: keep the artwork at least 1.5 mm thick and the tag 2–3 mm so the ring hole doesn’t tear.
- Stamps must be mirrored — the preset does it — and print best with the relief 2–3 mm proud of the base.
- Print flat on the bed; a raised logo on a plate needs no supports.
Capabilities
How the carving is generated
- The whole frame becomes geometry — no threshold, no tracing, just a continuous surface that follows every tone in the picture.
- Detail runs to 600 samples along the long edge; at the default 400 on an 80 mm panel that is one sample every 0.2 mm, matched to a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.1 mm layers.
- Smoothing at 2 by default, which is the setting that kills JPEG artefacts and sensor noise before they become a visible crust across the surface.
- Backing thickness is separate from carving depth, so the panel keeps a solid 2 mm behind the brightest highlights and never thins to a hole.
- Rounded-rectangle or round panels, with an optional 4 mm hole cut through the back plate if it is going to hang.
- The readout shows triangle count and STL size as you drag, so you can see a high-detail panel getting expensive before you download it.
Process
How it works
- Pick a picture with separationA subject that is clearly lighter or darker than its background. Portraits lit from one side work; a face against a dark room does not, because the room rises with the hair.
- Balance detail and smoothingRaise Detail for fine texture, raise Smoothing to calm noise, and use the invert switch if the subject should rise instead of sink.
- Print flat and light it wellPanel down on the bed, fine layers, no supports. Then put it where light crosses it at a shallow angle — that is when a relief comes alive.
Choosing an image
Which photos actually work as a relief
Height comes from brightness, and nothing else — the tool has no idea what is near and what is far. That single fact explains every disappointing relief. A dark jacket rises as high as dark hair; a bright window behind a subject sinks to the backing and takes the shoulder line with it. What works is a picture where tone happens to follow form: a face lit from one side, a pet against a plain wall, a leaf, an engraving, a coat of arms, a mountain ridge against sky. Crop tight so the subject fills the frame, lift the shadows a little in any photo editor before you drop the file, and flatten a busy background to a single tone if you can. Five minutes of editing beats any slider in this panel.
Viewing
Raking light — why your relief looks flat indoors
A relief has no colour and no outlines; every bit of the image you see is a shadow the surface casts on itself. Lit head-on from a ceiling fixture, a 2 mm carving casts almost nothing and the panel looks like a blank slab. Stand it so light arrives across the surface at roughly 20 to 30 degrees — a lamp to one side, a window off to the left, an LED strip above a shelf angled down — and the same panel snaps into a picture. Printing in a matte, light filament helps because gloss scatters the very highlights you are trying to read. If your display spot has flat frontal light and cannot be changed, the picture wants to be a backlit lithophane instead of a relief.
Notes
Good to know
- Brightness is height, so tonal depth and physical depth only coincide by luck; scenes with a bright background invert in a way no slider can fix.
- High detail on a large panel produces millions of triangles — the STL size in the readout climbs fast, and slicing time with it.
- Steep tonal edges become near-vertical walls that print as small overhangs; a step of smoothing usually looks better than a step of depth.
- The panel is solid geometry meant to be viewed in reflected light. For a photo lit from behind, use the lithophane maker, which is tuned for transmission.
FAQ
Questions, answered
What is a bas-relief and how is it different from a lithophane?
A bas-relief is a shallow carving read by the shadows it casts in front light, printed a few millimetres deep on a solid back. A lithophane is a thin panel read by light passing through it, where thickness controls brightness rather than shape.
How deep should a photo relief be?
Two millimetres of carving over a 2 mm back is a good default at 80 mm wide. Scale the depth with the panel: a 150 mm relief can carry 3 mm, while a 40 mm one looks best nearer 1 mm.
What detail setting should I use?
Enough that one sample lands under 0.3 mm of the print and no more. At 80 mm wide, 400 samples gives 0.2 mm per sample; doubling it multiplies the triangles without adding anything your nozzle can lay down.
My subject is sunken instead of raised — how do I fix it?
Tick “Raise bright areas instead of dark” in the Relief section. Dark tones rise by default, which suits engravings and dark subjects on light grounds; the switch suits the opposite.
What layer height should I print a relief at?
Zero point one millimetres or finer. Layer lines run across the surface as horizontal bands, and on a relief they compete with the very shadows carrying the image.
Where does my photo go?
Nowhere. It is decoded into a brightness grid inside this tab and discarded when you close it — no server sees the file, which is the point when the photo is of your family.
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