We have brought to an end another calendar year, as well as another business season, the most successful for us so far. We have achieved all our business goals that we formed at the beginning of the year. It is noticeable that the business for most of our clients has also increased. Unfortunately, one of the reasons for this are the horrific consequences of the pandemic that has hit the United States and the UK, as well as the whole world after all.

This year was full of temptations. It brought us new reality and we all needed to adjust to the new rules in a short period of time. Unfortunately, some failed, not through their own fault. The market is simply brutal and lockdown has closed some businesses. Everyone who managed to push through learned something new and came out stronger. We hope that in the new year, humanity will win a complete victory over the pandemic and come back to somewhat more normal way of life.

Our business plan for the year 2021 is pretty much the same as the previous ones. We have added another member to our team, although Alen will still do almost all the work. However, we have big plans for the future and we think that the decision to dedicate part of our time to learning and improving the skills of our new member who is training in graphic art is the right one. It’s a process, so more on that next year.

We would like to thank all our clients, business associates and friends for the trust you have placed in us. We believe that we have fulfilled your expectations and we hope that in the new year we will only affirm the successful cooperation.

Our holidays will be slightly prolonged as we celebrate Christmas on January, 7^th, so we will be out of office from December, 28^th – January, 10^th.

We wish you all a happy and successful New year and happy upcoming holidays. Stay safe and have a wonderful time with your family.

Yours sincerely,

Aurora and Alen

The post As we near the end of the year.. appeared first on Memorial Pic.

Since then, our small company has been operating successfully for many years with already a number of long-term clients, and we are immensely grateful to them for their trust. We hope that we have reciprocated in the right way with quality work, reasonable prices and responsibility. A good reputation is heard far and wide, so the group of companies we work for expands every year. Almost everyone who sent us an order once continued to use our services. Once again, thank you so much for your business and trust.

However, this practice has become unsustainable. The growth in number of new customers has led to the fact that we are constantly overwhelmed with orders that, at the moment, we can barely deliver on time. Also, the increase in the workload of most of our clients is obvious, which contributes to all of it and it is something we didn’t count on. So, for example, at this moment, the delivery time for the order received today is 8+ days.

This tempo has been going on for months and, as all this found us unprepared, we started doing what we never dreamed we would do – literally reject new clients and cooperation of any kind. It is very unfriendly and unprofessional, but at the moment we are simply forced to do it. In July we turned down three companies – two from the States and one from Ireland. We are both angry and sad about it, but it would be completely frivolous to start a collaboration that we know will not go very smoothly.

Our team consists of a graphic artist and a coordinator. We are very serious about the quality of our work and every single portrait we deal with is processed up to 2-3 hours, in order to get the best possible result. We thought that we would be able to meet all the obligations on our own, and when we realized that we had to include someone else, we encountered a problem. It turned out to be impossible to find a graphic artist who is maximally responsible, who would work for the same price as we do, and whose quality of work, at the same time, is equal to ours, which is the most important thing at the end of the day. All this is also the reason why we do not outsource the work to third parties – we want to provide the best possible quality and to stand proudly behind our work.

So, we have decided to create a graphic artist out of scratch. Our new associate Vanja will be a valuable member of our community in the foreseeable future, but, still, it takes a lot of time and effort to get such a quality associate, which we insist on.

In the meantime, we will continue to do our work the best and fastest we can for our regular customers. I hope that the delivery time you are used to will not be extended, and if it does happen, we will definitely announce it regularly and I hope that you will be able to understand this.

To illustrate what kind of busyness we are dealing with, here’s a few recent examples… We work up to 17 hours every day, I couldn’t see my parents this week, my friend’s father passed away and I couldn’t attend the funeral, we had to work two Sundays in a row, there are some errors on our website that we can’t find time to fix, etc. Even the time spent writing this post is a real problem for me, because every hour is precious. All this drives me crazy; I feel embarrassed and angry at the same time. However, the company’s policy has always been that the delivery time, specified by ourselves by the way, must be met.

I have to mention that recently we have had many inquiries for the preparation of various scenes, engraving applications, map restorations, etc. We specialize in portrait editing and we only do portrait restoration and retouching. We really try to avoid everything except that, especially lately.

For all of the customers who need such services, or services that we normally offer, but cannot accept at the moment, you can contact the following artists/ companies:

• Charlie Martin
• Cameron Moore at Memorial Designer
• Andrey Larinov at Impact Etching
• Richard Hagen
• Art Miso graviranje fotokeramika

Of course, we cannot and do not want to provide guarantee for the quality of their work, but these are well-known names who have been working successfully in the industry for many years, some much longer than us.

I hope that we will find a way to overcome everything in the right way.

Stay safe and have a great week.

The post Demanding times appeared first on Memorial Pic.

First of all, we did not intend to prepare such a shop at all, but the need for it occurred as a result of certain circumstances. We figured that we do not need a web shop at all. Why? Well, 90% of our work is preparing portraits for laser etching / ceramic pictures and recently we’ve got involved in glass art etching. Portraits, usually from not very good photos, are quite demanding for processing and each of them is a challenge and in order to get the most sophisticated portrait for headstones, each of them takes us up to several hours of work. This is what we love to do and want to do it, as well as the fact that we’re really good at it. When it comes to various other applications such as birds, flowers, religious motifs, etc. with almost every such order, we are regularly asked if we already have something similar. That’s why we decided, with the encouragement of some of our clients, to start a shop that will contain such things. Clients will not wait for processing and we will be able to devote most of their attention for far more demanding portraits. Practically a win win situation.

How to make an online shop with digital files?

We’ve created our website by ourselves, so we’ve decided to try to make a web shop on our own, too. We’ve used an open source software, which we’ve implemented on the existing WP platform, all free of charge. But what was not free, or rather, what was not worth it, it’s a matter of time spent on detecting, identifying and removing various problems, on a website and on the server that came one after another. Some were serious (functionality and security) and others were harmless (design and user experience) and they all nearly drove us to madness. After all, we managed to create a safe, nice and functional online shop with laser / impact etching items, and we also learned something.

The beginning

At the moment, we only have a couple of files ready for purchase in the shop. We’ve tried to make each one of them flawless, so we needed a certain amount of time to spend on their preparation and we would surely not be putting them up into the shop like on the treadmill. Nevertheless, this is not our priority. What is important is that the shop has been tested, it has a secure encryption, so your data is practically impossible to steal and, theoretically, there should not be any problems. If problems occur, please contact us immediately so that we can solve all the problems.

Items

The items we will put up into the shop are the ones related to the headstone picture industry. With every purchase you will be able to choose an option where you can suggest what would like to be available in the shop. In this way we will offer only useful and of course quality items. Feel free to give us a direct message or leave a comment to suggest which items are considered useful and they will soon be available in the shop. At the moment, we only have laser etching items, but who knows, maybe we’ll expand the offer in time. More about it soon. Also, from time to time we will publish completely free items! Some of them may be slightly lower quality than the others, but they will certainly be quite usable. We will try to insert new items at least once a week, but it will depend on the free time we have.

Copyright

All of the items that will be available in the shop will be prepared only using one or mostly a combination of the following photos:

• Our own pictures
• Pictures our clients sent us with permission for use/ reuse
• Pictures from the net we asked and got permission to use
• Pictures with a Creative Commons license
• Pictures offered in the public domain
• Pictures labeled as free to reuse with modification
• Pictures bought from third parties
• Pictures from websites which provide copyright-free images
• Pictures with clear permission for use, reuse

We take copyright very seriously and we will try to keep every item 100% clean and clear. As we said, this shop was not necessary to us and the last thing we really need are legal problems. However, if you notice that an item violates someone’s rights, please inform us immediately so that we can adjudicate on this matter. We guarantee that we will not use the image that is not even mentioned above, but we cannot guarantee that we have not received or purchased a copy image, or even that Google has mistakenly created the image as free to use for commercial purposes (which happened once a few years ago!).

Price range

We will always try to have reasonable prices for which you get what you really need or want. We have a good reputation about the price/quality balance of our services, and our intention is to continue this with our web shop. Also, we will have holidays discounts on quantity, but now we really do not have time to think about it and do something additional about it.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below or contact us on a well-known email.

Aurora and Alen

Memorial Pic

The post Now available – Web Shop appeared first on Memorial Pic.

Also, this survey is opened continuously for our business partners as well as for everybody from the industry whose opinion and advice will mean a lot to us.

Thank you for your time.

[contact-form-7]

The post Can we get some feedback from you? appeared first on Memorial Pic.

Our clients however should not notice any kind of significant change because, as usual, when we receive the order we immediately inform you about the exact delivery time, so you can still rely on us.

Anyhow, we use the opportunity to share this picture of St. Anthony of Padua, prepared for laser etching. St. Anthony is considered to be a patron saint of lost items, lost people, lost souls, travelers .. It’s a nice religious motif to be included in a headstone design

The picture is 40cm in height, at 300dpi resolution.

This file is completely free.

[contact-form-7]

The post FREE – St. Anthony of Padua, preparation for etching appeared first on Memorial Pic.

Most of our partners we cooperate with gets the pictures from their clients which are then forwarded to us for processing. These pictures are usually quality photographs because, of course, families want a good memorial photo. However, while scanning / cropping photos, with at least 50% of the cases easily avoidable mistakes are made. This post is intended for everyone making these mistakes. All of you who don’t make these mistakes already know that this doesn’t apply to you.

How to properly scan a portrait / photo?

The following lines apply to every photo scanning or cropping that will be sent for further editing and processing. If we follow these simple steps, we will surely get a better picture, a better-quality product, and all of it in a short period of time.

Photo scanning

While scanning a photo, make sure that the surface of the glass on which the photo is placed is clean. Even the tiniest grains of dust can cause an unpleasant stain on the face that does not actually exist in the photo. The same goes for hair, grease, and scratches on the glass. It’s enough to gently brush the glass surface several times until you are sure it’s really clean. After scanning, make sure that the scanned digital image is really as clean as the original photo. It is desirable to do this with each new scan. Also, always remove all the filters and effects on the scanner that may have stayed on from the previous scan.

Cropping the portrait

The photograph being scanned is usually much smaller than the surface of the scanner. However, people occasionally find it necessary to scan the entire scanner’s working area. This, of course, is not necessary. In order to save time and space on the disk, and get better quality at the same time, just crop the photo ONLY. When it is necessary to process the entire photograph, e.g. landscape, only photograph is sufficient, there is absolutely no need to send us all the blank space around the photo, or the entire surface of the scanner.

The main part of our offer is the portrait processing for memorial photos. Clients however often do not have a studio portrait photo, but they send us whole amateur photo with many people in it, with unnecessary space around the person whose portrait is required. In this case, just crop the narrow area around the person from which the portrait will be created. There is no need to spend pixels and MBs on, for example, the car next to the person, if there is no need to process the car, and so on. In this way, not only you save space and time, but correct cropping is useful for the quality of the scanned digital photograph. More on this in the text below.

Resolution

Every digital file that is sent to printing or engraving needs to satisfy the needs of the equipment that will process it. When it comes to printing photos for making ceramic pictures (like with every other quality printing), these files are processed at a resolution of 300dpi. The same applies to laser etching. This means that the final file we deliver must be at 300dpi resolution. The problem can appear when we get a picture that is very small and 72dpi at the same time. This often happens and then we need to increase its size by x times.

What is this really about? The simplest way to explain it would be that dpi stands for dots per inch (pixel per inch). So, the 300dpi resolution image has 300pixels (dots) per inch. More pixel density means a sharper, clearer, and therefore a better picture. Now, when we get a portrait scanned at 72dpi, it’s usually a very small image and we need to increase its resolution (density of dots) up to 300dpi, as well as the size. For example, from 2x3cm photo we need to get a picture that will go on to 24x30cm ceramic plaque.

This enlargement practically means that where there was one dot, now it has to be four or more dots. All of this is simply performed by algorithms with a single click, but the machine cannot know what the person whose portrait is being enlarged looked like and it will create additional dots that are similar to the nearest ones in order to fill formed gaps of the enlarged picture. The result is usually blurred, sometimes completely useless picture. The more we enlarge, the poorer the picture quality we get. If the image is scanned at 300dpi, this process will be painless. Always scan a photo (cropped area) to at least 300dpi!

The most important

Unbelievably, but not so rarely we get photos that are too cropped. For some reason, almost everything except the person’s face is missing. This picture, of course, cannot be processed, unless we add or draw in all those missing parts of hair, body, clothes to get a suitable picture for the monument. It is doable if there’s not too much of it missing. We regularly add parts of the body, clothes, etc. However, if it is necessary to add 50% of the picture that will go on the memorial photo, it is incredibly risky because we cannot know what the hair outline was like, and the family can find the appearance of a person unnatural and refuse to use the image and maybe even the whole order. The examples below will tell you the best what is it all about. After all, the process of adding missing areas in these pictures lasts forever if we want everything to look very natural, which unnecessarily takes us a lot of extra time, and that brings us back to the beginning of this post.

Amateur touching up

Sometimes families try to improve the picture on their own using various magic tools, automatic web services or even mobile apps. This of course results in additional ruining of already poor-quality image. The experience we have is most likely incomparably greater then theirs, and we will most definitely do a better job with the original picture than with these “touched up” pictures. You can send us such pictures as a reference file, but make sure you always send us the original, unspoiled picture.

Mobile phone pictures

Photos taken with mobile phones are, most of the times, very poor quality for processing. The camera can be bad, and the lightning is almost never good which directly affects the photo quality. If it is still necessary to process these photos, send us the photo from the phone memory, by all means, do not send us a screenshot from the phone display. It is by far the worst possible option, the quality of the camera is completely erased, and picture size and resolution are poor. So, forget about screenshots and try to get transfer of the picture from the phone memory to email or computer.

So, to summarize

If you have the opportunity to scan the photos you send us (or to anyone else), do it in the following way:

• Clean the scanner’s working surface
• Crop only the part of the photo that needs to be processed
• Make sure you haven’t cropped too much. Leave each and every part of the photo that needs to be used
• Set the resolution to at least 300dpi

This will take you one minute, and it can significantly contribute to quality of the final product (ceramic picture, laser etching or whatever) and shorten the processing period in many ways.

The bad photo that we get affects the quality of the memorial picture, and therefore the entire headstone. If you or your clients do not have the opportunity to scan a photo yourself, forget all this and send us what you have. During the 17 years we have processed thousands of such pictures and we guarantee that we will do the best possible job. But if there’s a possibility for obtaining the more accurate photo, please try to do so. We believe that every link in the industry should deliver the maximum quality if we want the perfect final product and satisfied customers. We are pretty sure that we all share the same goal.

The post How To Properly Scan a Photograph appeared first on Memorial Pic.

We received a picture of a violin that needed processing. The picture was already large and clear, we did nothing special, just proper converting to B&W and isolating it from the background. Because the violin Is really very beautiful we asked our client for permission to share this picture.

This application is appropriate for all music related memorials, it is suitable as standalone etching or as part of a larger design.

The picture is in transparent PNG format, dimensions are 60x68cm, 300dpi resolution.

This file is completely free for download.

[contact-form-7]

The post FREE – Violin, music related preparation for etching appeared first on Memorial Pic.

As we are not certified designers, we have looked for someone who is (or thinks he is), someone who can meet our expectations for a not so big sum of money. We found the “solution” in online services offering such and various other services for smaller amounts of money ranging from $ 10- $ 100. Let’s not get into details, and we certainly won’t mention two online services we used, and to make a long story short – we made a mistake. In the end, we ordered a logo design from four different bidders. Two of these offered solutions that requested 3+ really necessary corrections at the mere beginning! We could not use either one of them, even after our modifications. Absolute catastrophe and $ 130 wasted. We decided to make our own logo.

How to start creating a business logo closely related to the monumental industry?

With research! We have come to the conclusion that logo design is a very serious job that requires awareness, knowledge and creativity. The first step is to focus on the general list of features that a logo must have: genuine, simple, memorable and minimalistic, and it must look good on black and white backgrounds. These are basics.
With this in mind, we have moved on to the messages that our logo should speak and which narrowly represent our business. We asked ourselves a simple question: what are we offering?

Picture editing of often older and bad photographs,
for further processing for memorial portraits for headstone in monumental industry.

So, our logo must represent stability and permanence, something that resists time and stands proudly and unchanged for centuries. That’s all that a family expects when they order a headstone, together with a quality picture on the headstone to confirm that idea. We decided that the main motif should be an antique Greek statue carved into stone, which will stand upright defiantly for thousands of years as a witness of time and people to come.

We have found this picture on google and contacted the owner for permission to use it for the logo. Pictures preparations for laser etching that we do are most commonly portraits, which include upper torso (just head and shoulders) of a person, so we only used that part from the picture we have found. We performed photo editing until we got a satisfactory flat black and white look. We’ve accentuated some sharp lines because we usually prepare these kinds of portraits for engraving in stone, where the depth of the engraving is highly appreciated, so the basic face features of our model looked sharp and deep.

The second part of our services is related to the picture preparations for companies that produce ceramic pictures for headstones. Furthermore, monument companies we work for often order photo editing of the picture, which is to be sent to the production of ceramic pictures. Also, we plan to get involved in the process of making portraits in GLASS ART technique.

All these pictures are commonly found in color and oval shape, which gives the ceramic plaque itself somewhat warmer and blissful appearance. In order to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting statements, we decided to put only a trace of color on our logo and include text that would be written in a mild and nostalgic font. The text also represents something that is usually engraved under the memorial picture on the headstone. We chose the beautiful Great Vibes font, which is completely free for commercial use.

Now that we have an antique portrait and a font to accompany it for our logo, we were still missing that detail that would leave an impression of what kind of business we do. That’s why we decided to put a rectangular frame that represents the headstone around everything. In the upper, right corner, we chose to put mild, light gradient, which represents tangible yet strong structure of a monument, as well as the sun rays that are shedding light on the memorial picture and headstone. These details are intended to say that the headstone and photo of the person will be illuminated and pampered with every new sunrise and will last as long as our sun exists.

In the end we got rid of all of the unnecessary bits and lowered the upper part of the rectangle so that the logo does not look too flat, and to get the effect of a portrait that springs out from the stone, which should represent a life that continues in some other form, which is the core of all religions – belief in afterlife.

After all of this, it was only left to vectorize our new logo. Once again, we are not professional designers and it is possible that in the future we will look for a new logo design or modify this one. However, right now we are more than satisfied with this.

The post How We Created a Logo for Our Business appeared first on Memorial Pic.

There are many of these, but we haven’t come across to any that included desert motifs, so we decided to prepare one. This powerful quote are words of general George Smith Patton, Jr. However, we did not include quotation marks or add an extra line of text to say who the author is, just to keep a simple and clean design.

As usual, we took several pictures free for commercial use to borrow elements to be used for our composition. In the end, all of the elements blended together beautifully into one picture.

All elements are separated in layers, so you can easily adjust them to your needs. It’s a PSD file, dimensions are 49.8 x 75 cm, 300dpi.

This file is completely free for download.

[contact-form-7]

The post FREE – Battlefield Cross for Laser Etching appeared first on Memorial Pic.

A few years ago we were contacted by a person named Chuck, with the desire to restore the picture he sent us. After the job was finished, the gentleman was very pleased and he sent another old photo to be restored. Then another. Then he sent another two, three … over and over again. The cooperation lasted 4-5 months, during which time we have restored over 40 pictures, some of which were very old (the very first photos of American settlers) and very damaged.

Among the most recent photos that were sent, there was a picture from the period around the mid-60s, damaged black and white photo, which we only had to fix. After we fixed it, we sent it back to him restored, still black and white, with the suggestion that further on a quality colorization could be done.

It may have inadvertently seemed that we insisted on additional money for a new order, so we sent in another email immediately mentioning that if he does not want, for whatever reason, to pay for the colorization, we’ll do it for free. And the gentleman replied:

As usual you’ve done more than I expected.. As to your offer to color it for me… I am over 77 and on Social Security … yes I would like to take the offer… Thanks Chuck…

We were speechless. This gentleman has sacrificed its social security to provide a suitable memorial album of his ancestors. This really deserves enormous respect.

Of course, we did the colorization for free, Chuck was happy about it and we were for him. After that we did several other jobs for him, after which we suddenly broke contact. We tried to find him, without success. Occasionally we remember him, as now, while writing this article.

Chuck, we hope you enjoy at peace, wherever you are.

——————

Photo credit: The Mysterious Man by i-am-JENius @DeviantArt

Note: This article was actually published on our other website that offered our photo restoration services only. Considering the nature of the content we decided to move the article here..

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