A photograph prints in four inks.
An engraving of it prints in one at any size
Line work is what survives everything a photograph does not: a foil stamp, a one-colour label, a deboss, a bottle at 40 mm and a poster at two metres. This makes it properly — the tone carried by the width of each line, whole marks rather than a traced outline, and the finest of them measured in millimetres your printer can actually hold. Free, in full. No sign-up.
- Free, no account.
- Every effect and every file is free from the first open — no sign-up, no credits, no watermark across the middle.
- Nothing is uploaded.
- Your picture is decoded, engraved and saved in the browser. It never leaves the machine you are sitting at.
- Ten effects, one engine.
- Lines, waves, hatching, contours, isolines, spirals, rings, scribble, stipple and a proper halftone screen.
- Millimetres, not pixels.
- The page, the spacing and the line width are the figures a printer asks for, and the panel says when one is too fine to hold.
- Separations, four ways.
- One ink, or four plates at the conventional angles — as layers, as pages, as files, or over each other.
- SVG and PDF, both vector.
- Paths, not a picture of paths. Open either in Illustrator, Affinity or Inkscape and carry on.
What it draws
Ten ways to build a picture out of marks
The same photograph, the same tone curve, ten different hands. Every card below is real output of the engine, from one lit sphere — the hardest thing there is to hold in line work.
Parallel lines that swell where it is dark
- The oldest engraving there is, and the one that prints anywhere
- Tone carried by the width of the line, not by its spacing
- Set the angle and the lines per centimetre; nothing else to decide
Lines that follow the form
- The direction is read from the picture itself, not set by hand
- Evenly spaced, so a cheek does not tangle and a background does not go bald
- What makes a face read as a face rather than as a screen
The banknote line
- Lines that undulate further where the picture is darker
- Two things carry the tone at once, and the picture lifts into relief
- The look of an engraved portrait on a note or a share certificate
Hatching built up in layers
- One direction for the light tones, a second and a third for the shadows
- How an engraver builds a tone, and how a pen-and-ink drawing does
- Shadows get texture rather than weight
Dots, closer together where it is dark
- Variable-radius blue noise: no grid, so nothing can moiré against it
- Minimum distance is yours to set — the press decides that figure
- The punched dots of an engraving, or a hand-drawn illustration
A proper screen, at a proper angle
- Dots on a rotated grid, the area following the tone exactly
- In the shadows they run together, which is how a screen prints a solid
- Screen print, risograph, and anything with a coarse dot on purpose
A contour map of the picture
- The tone cut into levels, each level's edge drawn as a line
- Darker levels get the heavier line, so it reads as a picture
- Editorial, covers, anything that wants to look surveyed
One line, from the middle out
- A single stroke that thickens and thins as it passes the picture
- One continuous path — a pen plotter draws it without lifting
- Unmistakable, and nobody can tell how it was made
What it can do
Everything the file will need before it prints
Photographs, tone, ink and the shape of the handover.
The picture
What goes in.
- JPEG, PNG and WebP, read in the browser
- Transparency respected — a cutout stops the engraving at its edge
- Downscaled to what the marks can carry, which takes the grain out with it
- Brightness, contrast and gamma, on luminance in linear light
- Black and white points, so highlights do not speckle and shadows do not plug
The marks
How the tone is built.
- Ten effects, from a plain line screen to variable-radius stipple
- Lines per centimetre and the screen angle, set as numbers
- The finest and the widest a mark may be, in millimetres
- Below the hairline nothing is drawn at all — paper is a better highlight
- Wave amplitude, hatch layers, contour levels, dot spacing and randomisation
The ink
What it prints in.
- One ink: RGB, CMYK, or black only
- Four-colour separation with the conventional screen angles
- Cyan 15°, magenta 75°, yellow 0°, black 45° — the set that does not moiré
- Every plate carries the same tone curve and the same effect
- The colour on screen is the ink converted, not a different one
The file
What leaves the browser.
- SVG and PDF, both vector, at the size it will print
- Separations as PDF layers, as pages, as separate files, or composited
- Lines written as the shape they cover, so the varying width survives
- Or as bare centre lines, which is what a plotter and a laser want
- Bleed on the page, and a node count so a heavy file is no surprise
How it works
Four steps, and the third is the one that matters
The picture is read in your browser and stays there.
Drop the picture in
JPEG, PNG or WebP. For a subject cut out of its background, a PNG with transparency — outside it nothing is engraved.
Pick an effect
Ten of them. Set the lines per centimetre and the angle; everything else has a sensible figure already in it.
Set the tone
Contrast and gamma, then the two ends: what is light enough to leave as paper and what is dark enough to run solid.
Save it
SVG or PDF, in one ink or as four plates. Both are vector, both are in millimetres, and both open in any editor.
Where it is used
Wherever a photograph would print badly
One ink, any size, and no screen to fight with.
Wine and spirits
The engraved château, the founder's portrait, the botanical. In one ink on uncoated stock, where a four-colour photograph would go to mud.
Labels and packaging
Line work holds at 40 mm on a bottle and at two metres on a display, which no fixed-resolution picture does.
Certificates and security print
Line engraving is hard to copy by construction, and it sits beside guilloché work without either fighting the other.
Editorial and posters
The op-ed portrait, the cover, the gig poster. Isolines and stipple read as drawn rather than as filtered.
Foil, deboss and one colour
A stamping die and a deboss want strokes and areas, not a photograph. So does screen print, and so does a riso.
Plotters, lasers and engravers
Turn the outlines off and the file is centre lines: paths a pen, a laser or a rotary engraver can follow directly.
Questions
What people ask before they trust a file to a press
Is my photograph uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is decoded in your browser, engraved there and saved from there. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is stored — this page would work with the network unplugged after it has loaded.
What files can I open?
JPEG, PNG and WebP. The picture is scaled down to about 1400 pixels on its longer side before anything else happens: an engraving cannot carry more detail than that, and the downscale takes the sensor grain with it.
Will it cut the background out for me?
No, and that is deliberate. A threshold over a background gives a field of specks that no tone curve takes out again. Cut the subject out in whatever you already use and save a PNG with transparency — outside it, nothing is engraved.
How fine can the lines be?
You set the finest and the widest mark in millimetres. Under 0.05 mm the panel warns you: offset holds about 0.06 mm on coated stock, screen print and flexo want considerably more, and a line thinner than the process holds prints as a broken grey dash.
What is the difference between stipple and halftone?
A halftone screen puts a dot at every crossing of a regular grid and varies its size. A stipple keeps the dots nearly the same size and varies how many there are. The screen holds a tone exactly; the stipple has no grid, so it cannot moiré against anything.
Can I send this to a plotter or a laser?
Yes. Turn off “Outline the marks” on the export tab and the lines are written as bare centre lines rather than as the shape they cover, which is what a pen, a laser or a rotary engraver follows. The scribble and the spiral suit that best — both are long continuous strokes.
How do the separations come out?
Four plates at the conventional angles, in the process inks, and you choose the handover: real PDF layers you can switch on and off, one page per plate, one file per plate, or all four over each other on one page.
Why is my file so large?
Because an engraving is tens of thousands of marks and every one of them is a path. The node count is on screen as you work. Fewer lines per centimetre, a coarser sampling step or a higher threshold all bring it down, and the threshold costs the least — an empty highlight is free.
Can I engrave a logo or a drawing rather than a photograph?
Yes, though a flat-tone drawing has little for the effects to modulate. Line work made from a photograph is where this earns its keep; a logo is usually already vector, and tracing it would only lose accuracy.
Is it really free?
Yes. No account, no credits, no watermark, no limit on how many files you save. It is made by a packaging manufacturer, and it exists so that the artwork that reaches our presses is artwork that prints.
Turn a photograph into line work
Ten effects, real millimetres, SVG and PDF. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to install.