I hate to admit it but Gimp has got me stumped. Even with watching videos for lame brains like me I can not do what I want to do. I want to be able to size and crop a photo to 102 mm x 156 high including a 6 mm light grey border all around. This works perfectly for my lithophane lamp and gives startling results, which I have only been able to accomplish once. If anyone has any suggestions I would be grateful. I do minimum thickness 0.3 mm and max at 5.5 mm and the grey band around give me a uniform 2 mm tuck into the slots and help steady it when I am printing it vertically. The lamp is on thingeeverse at Lithophane Lamp by brimstone326 - Thingiverse. It doesnt get good reviews or comments because people dont know about the gray border and have all sorts of thicknesses around the edge of their prints. Thanks to Ender 5 s suggestion I have solved that problem.
First, is it possible you could post a photo of the one you did get done (as long as it wouldn’t be an invasion of privacy)?
I presume you’re aware that the photo editor doesn’t need to deal with the thickness: the lithophane creation website will do that. I’ll see if I can find a simpler program that can do what you need or, failing that, a step-by-step procedure for doing it with Gimp.
I’ve noticed a add-on for Lithophanes in FreeCad. Never tested it / install it
I had a step by step for gimp that would be wonderful. I read tutorials and follow them but just cant make the photo size on top of the canvas, for some reason I cant size the photo in gimp. For some reason I cant make a picture of my lantern with my web cams. I shall dig out an old digital camera and charge it up. All I get is a solid glow.
I can size the canvass with no problem and set the grey colour I desire but when I import the photo I cant size it to save my soul. Frusyration makes my brain damage go wild.
My problem is not creating the lithos, it is juat sizing and cropping the photos to fit on the canvass leaving a 6 mm light gray band around. My settings are near perfect on the litho site for contrast and getting my 2mm thick x 6mm wide band all around.
All I need is a mac photo editing program that I can understand or a step by step in gimp that will work.
I’ve seen a clever way to create Colorfull lithos!!! Must look for the link…
There is a procedure on [U]https://itslitho.com/[/U]
Thats the link! Thanks mate!!!
@Vassili_Finellis I began to script a new video about producing Lithophanes and after doing a review of what I could find on the web decided the easiest approach, without requiring paid software, would be to recommend using pixlr.com as the image editor and then 3dp.rocks/lithophane to convert the image into an STL. I looked at other Lithophane web sites and they produced very large stl files without any apparent improvement in quality.
Unfortunately, 3dp seems to produce stl files with errors but these are easily fixed with meshmixer another free program.
While my sample prints were printing I returned to this forum and saw your recommendation of [U]https://itslitho.com/[/U]
WOW. This software looks great. I will spend some time with it and then may change directions and use this in my new Lithophane YouTube video. Thanks for the recommendation.
If you are ok with it I will give you a shout out in the video. What is the correct pronunciation of your first name? As a typical American, I do not want to mess it up. A phonetic spelling would be great. Thanks again. Irv
It is great indeed! There is no problem to give me a shout, i’ll be very glad. Thank you!!!
I’m Italian with Greek name 
Just download from my DropBox, you’ll hear my name how it phoneticaly spelled in Greek and you’ll find it very easy to pronounce it! https://www.dropbox.com/s/qixdntfnsc…22829.mp4?dl=0
Folks — I have a preview for the drvax forum users. Here is a brief preview of a new video I am working on inspired by the folks who participated in this post. I am creating a tutorial about the easiest free way to create Lithophanes. It ends up that taking a video of a Lithophane is a bit tricky. It is difficult to get the exposure correct so I ended up shooting a close up to demonstrate how a Lithophane works. The video component of this teaser will be in the upcoming video:
[video=youtube_share;3_oBRclW95A]Lithophane Teaser for forum.drvav.com - YouTube
Nice start to the video. Looking forward to the full video.
Me too. Lithophanes are hard to photograph.
I love it!!!
My lithophane lamp and my lithos look great but I need to learn how to crop and size then add the gray border or put the photo on a grey canvass that is 6mm bigger all around. It should be so simple to do but it is driving me crazy!
I am working on a tutorial, but GIMP is not as easy or straight forward as Photoshop.
BTW, I checked thingiverse. It seems the litho size is 104 x 156 rather than 102 x 156. It may only be 2mm but it could matter. Also, you say 6mm all around. I presume you mean 3mm on each side; a total of 6mm horizontally and 6mm vertically.
I was having trouble with the width so I shaved 2 mm as I remember. Something like that.
I would be very grateful for a simple explanation of how to do this in Gimp. I cant believe I am having such a problem with it.
My approach starts with creating a standard background image file. This image is completely gray and is to be used as the background for every litho. After opening the background, the image that is to be the foreground is opened. It’s scaled, then selected, copied, and pasted onto the background image, where it should be automatically centered. Finally the combo image is saved as a new file that will be uploaded to your fave litho site.
This approach is my solution for GIMP. In Photoshop I would do it differently, because PS has other tools available that make adding a border quite a bit easier.