The Lightburn Software Series
The Lightburn Software is probably the best generic laser cutting software available (I use it for almost all of my laser work). This series has tutorials, hints and tips as well as the occasional speed comparisons between it and RDWorks. My thanks to the team at Lightburn for allowing me to embed their videos.
Contents
A brief preview of some of the new features that came out in LightBurn 0.9.21, including the new ‘Adjust Image’ tool, measure tool, printing, multi-image scanning and compositing, and smaller, faster project files.
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External Resource Links for Lightburn New Features
https://lightburnsoftware.com/pages/trial-version-try-before-you-buy
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Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features
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0:00 hey folks it’s been a while since we’ve
0:02 done a lightburn video
0:04 and i thought that since we have a new
0:05 release coming fairly soon that this
0:07 would be a good opportunity to
0:09 go over some of the features that are
0:11 coming in the 9.21 release
0:14 first and foremost lightburn has a new
0:15 file format so if i load
0:17 this vector graphic which you’ve seen me
0:19 use before in other videos
0:21 it takes about two seconds to load just
0:24 about 2000 milliseconds
0:26 and this file on disk is approximately
0:28 53 megabytes 52.8 megs
0:32 if i load this file in the new lightburn
0:35 2
0:36 file format the same file with the same
0:38 content in the same graphics
0:41 everything identical takes milliseconds
0:44 or
0:44 half a second to load and the file on
0:47 disk
0:47 is 13.3 megabytes and so what that means
0:51 is
0:51 this file same content same everything
0:55 loads four times faster and takes one
0:57 quarter the space
0:59 now not every file is going to get those
1:01 exact same savings some will actually
1:03 save more
1:04 some slightly less but in general you’re
1:07 looking at about four to six times
1:09 a speed improvement and about one
1:11 quarter the size on disk
1:13 and this is across the board we’ve just
1:15 changed the way that the content is
1:16 stored
1:18 we’re not using compression yet or
1:19 anything super clever
1:21 so this data format is still easy to
1:24 work with
1:25 it’s just much faster it’s designed to
1:26 be parsed more quickly
1:29 on top of that we’ve added a new sharing
1:32 mechanism now this is not something that
1:34 you have to know about and you
1:36 probably won’t be affected by it at all
1:38 other than
1:39 the reduction in memory requirements so
1:42 this file is actually two copies of the
1:44 same stump
1:45 if i were to make more copies like this
1:50 in the original version of lightburn
1:52 the
1:53 current releases these are actual
1:56 new copies of the same data they are
2:00 just replicates and if i was to save
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
2:03 this to disk
2:04 it would save all of this data and all
2:06 of this data and all of this
2:08 data and so on in the new lightburn
2:11 and new lightburn file format each of
2:13 these copies
2:14 until they’re edited retain a link to
2:18 the original and so what that means is
2:20 that this outline here with all of these
2:22 nodes
2:24 doesn’t store itself again it knows that
2:27 it is just a copy of this one and hasn’t
2:29 been edited
2:30 so it just saves a reference to the
2:32 original now this happens
2:34 in the new file format as well as in
2:36 memory
2:37 so your memory requirements when using
2:40 large files or large arrays of content
2:43 will be lower so that’s going to improve
2:45 performance particularly on lower end
2:47 machines
2:48 who are somewhat ram constrained and it
2:50 will help out
2:51 users using the 32-bit version as well
2:56 this has been extended also to images
2:59 so for example if i bring in this
3:01 plumber
3:02 this file on disk right now takes about
3:07 136 kilobytes of data if i
3:11 make a grid array of this and make this
3:15 let’s say we’ll do 8 by 5
3:18 so that’s 40 copies of that original and
3:20 i save that
3:23 something strange happens this file is
3:26 actually smaller than
3:27 the other one and the reason it’s
3:29 smaller is
3:31 the thumbnail gets a little bit
3:32 different and so the thumbnail in this
3:34 case is actually taking up a significant
3:36 amount of room
3:37 uh in the light burn file
3:40 but the having 40 copies of this image
3:43 map
3:44 makes it not much bigger
3:47 and changes the thumbnail enough that
3:49 the thumbnail itself got smaller and
3:52 making the thumbnail smaller made the
3:53 file smaller it’s a little bit
3:54 counter-intuitive but
3:56 the upshot of all of that is having 40
3:58 copies of this graphic
4:00 in lightburn or on disk no longer takes
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
4:04 up
4:04 40 times the amount of space in memory
4:07 or on disk
4:08 so this is a good thing your projects
4:10 are smaller you’ll be able to work with
4:12 larger project files in general
4:15 without having memory issues or
4:17 requiring as much ram
4:20 we’ve also added multi-image scanning so
4:23 to give you an idea of what i mean by
4:25 that
4:25 normally in lightburn if you were to
4:29 fill these images or run this image as a
4:33 job if i preview this
4:34 you’ll see it scans one image at a time
4:40 moving from left to right however
4:43 when i bring this page up i can now
4:45 choose four images
4:46 to fill them by groups or fill them all
4:48 at once which you couldn’t do before
4:50 and so now previewing shows that all of
4:53 these plumbers get
4:54 scanned at the same time and so if you
4:57 do
4:58 large batches of graphics that contain
5:01 images
5:02 you’ll save a lot of time with this it
5:04 used to be that they would scan one at a
5:05 time and now we can do
5:07 multiple scans together
5:10 we’ve also extended this
5:13 to work with transparent images as well
5:16 so if i take this
5:17 cartoon rhino which you’ve probably seen
5:19 me use before
5:22 reorient it rotate it a little bit scale
5:24 it do
5:25 fun things with it if i preview this
5:29 you’ll notice that this is composited
5:33 together properly you can’t see
5:35 the plumbers or the other rhino the
5:37 bigger rhino behind the smaller one
5:40 lightburn is now properly handling both
5:42 transparency and
5:44 compositing when using multi-image
5:47 scanning so if i
5:48 set this layer to scan shapes
5:50 individually and
5:52 run the preview again you can now see
5:55 that these things are all overlapping
5:57 and muddy
5:58 the way that the current version of
5:59 lightburn does work
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
6:01 if i go back into the image property
6:04 settings and change this to fill
6:06 all shapes at once now when i preview
6:10 you can see that things are properly
6:11 hidden
6:13 and properly cut out and this works for
6:15 any image mode
6:16 dithering threshold in grayscale and so
6:18 on
6:19 and transparency is supported so if i
6:21 change this to
6:23 let’s say just dither and run that
6:27 preview again
6:28 you can see that those dithered shapes
6:29 are still doing what they’re supposed to
6:34 we’ve also added and this is kind of a
6:37 big deal
6:39 we have a new feature in light burn
6:42 specifically for doing
6:43 image adjustments i’ll bring in a
6:46 graphic here just
6:47 to work with so
6:51 current versions of lightburn and for
6:54 quite some time have had
6:56 shape properties which allow you to
6:59 adjust
6:59 properties of the image so for example
7:01 gamma is sort of a mid-tone
7:04 curve by lowering the gamma value i’m
7:07 raising the brightness of the middle
7:10 brightness levels in this image but i’m
7:12 leaving black and white
7:13 where they are so you can play with
7:16 gamma you can adjust contrast you can
7:19 adjust brightness and so on and you’ve
7:21 been able to do this in lightburn for
7:23 quite some time
7:25 but most people i feel don’t know that
7:27 these controls are here
7:29 we also have image enhancement so
7:33 edge enhancement i guess would be the
7:35 better thing to call it
7:36 this basically makes edge
7:40 detail much much stronger it bolds it
7:44 effectively so if i set this off
7:47 or let me do turn this back on but i’ll
7:50 turn it off from here
7:51 if you watch the whiskers as i turn this
7:55 up you can see that they develop a black
7:57 halo and that gives you a much stronger
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
8:01 much more defined edge when you burn
8:04 this on a laser
8:05 and when engraving images in general you
8:08 actually want
8:09 the edges and the overall image quality
8:12 to look a little bit harsh
8:14 to your eye and when it runs on the
8:16 laser
8:17 that harshness will end up basically
8:19 giving you a slightly stronger punch on
8:22 those edges
8:23 and allow you to see more detail in the
8:26 end result it
8:27 uh it’s a little counter-intuitive but
8:29 it tends to make things look better and
8:30 not worse
8:32 the biggest problem that we have with
8:33 this is that most people don’t know that
8:35 they are there
8:37 so in the next version of lightburn
8:39 we’ve added
8:40 the adjust image feature and so this
8:44 allows you to change these settings in
8:46 real time
8:47 and it shows you all of the settings for
8:50 images
8:51 including your dithering mode whether
8:55 you’ve got this image set to negative or
8:56 not
8:57 if i choose half tone for example i can
9:00 adjust the halftone
9:02 cell count and so on in real time
9:05 i can change my dpi here so i’m going to
9:08 do that
9:08 to make this a little finer and so on
9:11 and i’m looking at a side by side
9:13 of the original image here and
9:16 the dithered end result that lightburn
9:19 is going to send to my laser
9:21 over here and i can zoom this in or out
9:24 it matches the two displays so that i
9:26 can make meaningful comparisons of these
9:28 two things
9:29 so if i put this on stookie which is my
9:31 personal favorite dithering mode
9:34 for images at least for photographic
9:36 things you can see
9:38 individual dots here i can go and look
9:41 to make sure that various details that i
9:43 want captured in the output
9:45 look correct and this dithered
9:48 output version is live so for example
9:51 i’m going to change this to newsprint
9:52 just because it updates quickly
9:54 if i modify my contrast you can see that
9:58 the contrast of the
9:59 output image is changing change my
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
10:02 brightness change my gamma
10:05 these things are affecting this output
10:07 image
10:08 on the fly in real time as i make these
10:10 changes and so
10:12 you’ll have a much easier time adjusting
10:15 your images
10:16 and tuning them and just a much easier
10:19 time accessing these settings than you
10:21 could in previous versions of lightburn
10:23 having them all
10:24 in this same place means that they’re
10:26 much easier to find
10:28 these settings here are all settings on
10:32 the image layer
10:33 on the cut cut layer i mean so those are
10:36 the settings that you would normally
10:38 access by double clicking here
10:40 and changing them in the image layer
10:44 and the others uh enhance radius and
10:48 amount
10:48 contrast brightness and gamma these are
10:50 settings that would normally be on shape
10:52 properties and they are set
10:54 per image so it’s important to remember
10:56 that these settings are layer settings
10:58 and these settings are image settings so
11:00 if you have more than one image
11:02 in your file on the same layer these
11:04 settings here are going to be affecting
11:06 all of them
11:07 so just a key point to keep in mind
11:11 we’ve also added for the next release
11:14 a measuring tool and so this is
11:16 something that lightburn has
11:18 had at least in some form
11:21 for quite a while but we’ve
11:24 made a fairly significant improvement on
11:26 what’s there already so
11:29 in the current version of lightburn if
11:31 i wanted to measure how far apart the
11:33 midpoints of these two hexagons were
11:36 i could do this using the line tool now
11:38 if you watch down here at the bottom in
11:40 this status bar
11:41 as i drag out a line from here
11:44 to here you can see there is a length
11:47 value
11:48 on the end there and that length value
11:50 is telling me how long this line is that
11:52 i’m creating
11:53 if i right mouse click or just hit
11:55 escape it cancels the current line
11:57 and so this has always been the way
11:59 we’ve recommended people to take
12:00 measurements so if i want to measure
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
12:02 from this dot
12:03 or from sorry from that corner to this
12:04 corner i can see that that was
12:07 31.7 millimeters long and now i just
12:10 right click and i haven’t made a new
12:12 line
12:14 that’s useful but there’s a lot more
12:16 information that we could present and so
12:17 we’ve now added
12:18 a measurement tool in lightburn and so
12:21 with this
12:22 if you hover over a shape it highlights
12:25 the shape in green
12:26 hovering over a line segment will
12:29 highlight that segment in purple
12:31 and you can see over here the shape has
12:33 six nodes
12:34 connected by six lines there are no
12:36 curves in this hexagon shape
12:38 the area is this many millimeters
12:41 squared
12:42 the perimeter length is 150 millimeters
12:44 so that means it is exactly 150
12:46 millimeters around
12:49 and then the segment i can see this
12:51 segment is 25 millimeters long
12:53 where it starts and ends uh what the
12:55 difference is in the start and end point
12:58 uh the angle of this line and so on and
13:01 if i’m pointing at an arc
13:02 like on this circle i can see that the
13:04 arc radius is 20 millimeters and that’s
13:07 where the center of the circle is
13:09 um so perimeter length area number of
13:13 nodes
13:13 segment length start point end point all
13:15 of this you can also
13:17 click hold and drag and the snapping
13:20 behaviors will affect this dragged line
13:22 but this isn’t creating new geometry if
13:25 as soon as i let go
13:26 it’s gone this is a temporary transient
13:28 line just used for measurement
13:30 and so i can see when i click here and
13:32 drag over to here
13:34 the distance between the two center
13:36 points of these hexagons
13:38 is 71.8 millimeters shown in the box
13:42 and i can see where the start and end
13:43 points are i can see what the angle of
13:45 this line is
13:46 and so on so this is quite useful
13:50 and the view controls are also still
13:53 live while this box is up so i can pan
13:56 and drag and move the view around zoom
13:58 in zoom out
14:00 just hit escape to cancel it like any
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
14:02 other tool and it’s gone and i have made
14:04 no changes so that’s also fairly handy
14:09 next up we have a new text editing
14:12 feature
14:12 so this is a test of some
14:16 text
14:19 normally to edit text you would just
14:21 double click and place the cursor
14:24 and make your adjustments and so on this
14:27 works well
14:28 but if you have something like this
14:31 where your text is
14:32 upside down or scaled or bent or things
14:34 like that sometimes it’s
14:35 counter-intuitive
14:36 to use the cursor in weird orientations
14:40 and you can’t drag select a portion of
14:42 your text and edit you know parts of it
14:45 replace parts of it easily that kind of
14:46 thing so we’ve added
14:48 a right click edit text shape box
14:52 and with this box up i can
14:55 make changes make selections change the
14:57 font
14:58 and so on only for the entirety of the
15:01 text for font changes
15:03 but individual things like if i want to
15:05 replace this word
15:07 or these words this is some text
15:12 of some kind it’s much easier to make
15:16 larger edits uh move the cursor around
15:19 uh bulk click and copy uh delete that
15:22 kind of thing so
15:23 this is an easier way to edit larger
15:26 volumes of text
15:27 and you still have access to all of the
15:29 other text controls in here
15:30 as well so the last thing that i’m going
15:32 to talk about today
15:33 is lightburn’s new print feature now
15:36 we’ve always had the ability to
15:38 save from the preview window for example
15:40 so if i hit alt p
15:42 to bring up my preview i could click
15:44 save image here
15:45 and it would save whatever you’re
15:47 looking at and
15:48 that works it’s possible to send client
15:51 proofs
15:51 in that form for example but if your
15:54 graphics are complicated
15:56 that may not be ideal the image may not
15:58 be at the scale that you want or give
16:00 you the quality that you want
Video Transcript for Lightburn New Features (Cont…)
16:02 so we now have the ability to say print
16:04 in black only or
16:05 keeping colors and so to give you
16:08 an idea of what that means if i put an
16:11 outline around this
16:12 in red we’ll call that our cut out line
16:15 and i say save this
16:16 in black only or print this in black
16:18 only
16:19 i’ll call this plumber
16:24 so if i open up that plumber file you
16:27 can now see
16:27 he’s right there in the middle i can
16:29 zoom in and the quality is great
16:31 at a variety of zoom levels so it’s
16:34 stored
16:34 at the resolution of the printer not at
16:37 the resolution of your job
16:39 and the outline has been converted from
16:40 red to black so this would be an ideal
16:43 proof to send to a client
16:45 if you have a laser that uses a print
16:48 driver
16:48 so for example epilogue trotec
16:51 gravograph
16:52 gcc they use print driver based
16:56 laser control so if you have coreldraw
16:58 or
16:59 adobe illustrator or things like that
17:01 you can print directly from those
17:02 software packages
17:04 to your laser lightburn has never been
17:06 able to drive those
17:07 but now we can because we can print
17:10 while keeping color
17:11 so i’m going to print this to that same
17:13 pdf file just to show you
17:18 so when i open that file now i can see
17:20 my
17:22 image in the middle and my vector
17:23 graphic around the outside
17:25 properly in the color that i chose and
17:27 so this means that
17:28 you can print from light burn to a print
17:31 driver based laser and it should
17:33 just work there may be issues with this
17:36 we
17:36 haven’t been able to test this as
17:38 thoroughly as we would like but if you
17:40 encounter any issues with it please let
17:41 us know
17:43 that’s all i have for now um
17:46 we’re hoping to have this out sometime
17:49 between
17:51 mid-march to the end of march um so you
17:53 should look for these soon
17:55 thanks for watching
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Last updated April 25, 2024
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