Support for importing PNGs

[mathcampbell]

it be possible to implement a PNG importer? I know most people are usiong this to do PCB etching but I'd like to etch actual bitmaps onto a piece of metal and a striaght PNG improter would be helpful.
Thanks

[Andrew-Dickinson]

Can you explain a bit more about your use case? One concern I have with bitmaps is that the Photon screens are mostly monochrome, which means if you want to etch non-binary pixel data you'll need to do it using exposure time. That is definitely possible using the file formats we write to, but it's not easy to do with how we've set things up. I don't think greyscale support is something we would ever introduce into this project, since it has very little relevance for PCB manufacturing

[digiexchris]

I have a use-case, etching something like this onto an aluminum plate. It's monochrome already. Making reproduction machinery name plates. I'd love to use my photon as a generic photolithography device.

[Andrew-Dickinson]

Yep that sort of use case does seem like a good thing for us to support. I don't have a ton of bandwidth for this project these days, but I'll leave this issue open to track the feature request

[mathcampbell]

Arrhhh sorry I never saw the first reply to this! My use case is actually etching brass & silver for jewellery (but also signage, so same as the other reply!) I have found a way to “hack” it using an online generator but it’s pretty hacky and hasn’t always worked. A specific “png to photon” tool would be stellar Math

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On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 10:54 PM Andrew Dickinson ***@***.***> wrote: Yep that sort of use case does seem like a good thing for us to support. I don't have a ton of bandwidth for this project these days, but I'll leave this issue open to track the feature request — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#7 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJJHB7SUKMSCB663K5QXZTXT26KNANCNFSM6AAAAAATNXKE64> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>