Image relief & lithophane

Turn a photo into a carved plaque — or invert it for a lithophane that lights up from behind.

Your picture becomes a height field: every sample of the image sets the thickness of the plaque at that point. Bright areas rise and dark areas stay low, so a photo comes out as a raised carving you can read across the surface.

Invert turns it into a lithophane. Dark becomes thick, so the print blocks light where the photo is dark — and the picture appears only when you hold it up to a window or a lamp. That is the whole trick, and it is why base thickness matters: under about 0.6 mm the highlights get so thin they tear or print as holes, so leave the base around 0.8 mm rather than chasing contrast by thinning it.

Print a lithophane standing up, at 100% infill. Upright means each layer carries one row of the picture, which is what gives it the vertical detail; solid infill means no internal pattern shows through when it is backlit. A slow first layer and no supports.

Smoothing trades detail for calm. Photos from the web carry JPEG noise and dithering that become surface roughness in a print. One pass usually cleans that up; more starts eating fine detail.

Contrast matters more than resolution. A flat, evenly-lit photo makes a flat, muddy plaque no matter how large you print it. Crop tight, raise the contrast in any photo editor first, and prefer an image with a clear subject against a plain background.

The image is read once, when you choose it. What is stored is a small grid of brightness values, not the photograph — so the project stays small, and changing the size or depth afterwards is instant and never asks for the file again. It also means the picture cannot be swapped from the property panel; generate a new relief for a different photo.

1. Open the Generate panel from the left sidebar and choose Image relief (under Signs & art).
2. Choose an image, or drag one onto the picker.
3. Set the width — the height follows your image’s proportions.
4. Set the base thickness (the thinnest material) and the relief depth (how deep the picture is carved).
5. For a lithophane, turn on Invert so dark areas print thick.
6. Generate: the plaque drops in as one solid.