What a depth map is
A depth map (or height map) is a grayscale image where each pixel's brightness stands for a physical height: white is highest, black is lowest, and gray is everything in between. CNC routers and laser engravers read those values directly to carve at variable depths, turning a flat blank into a tactile bas-relief.
Building one used to mean modelling in CAD or hand-painting grayscale by eye. Embossing Studio does it from a single photograph in a few seconds, and exports a PNG that any standard fabrication tool can read.
From photo to PNG
Open Embossing Studio and drop your image onto the upload zone, or send one across from Photo Studio's export bar. PNG, JPEG, and WebP all work. Anything below 1024 px on the long edge is worth running through Photo Studio's Upscale first, since more pixels in means more detail in the height map out.
The depth model leans on visual cues like shadows, perspective, and occlusion. It works best on photos with directional lighting, such as a side-lit portrait, a sculpture under a single key light, or a subject with clear foreground-to-background separation. It struggles with flat front-lit scenes, mirrors, glass, water, and busy textures with no real depth. The cleaner the spatial information in the source, the cleaner the output.
Click Generate. The model produces a high-resolution depth map in 5 to 15 seconds, and the editor switches to the results view with a 3D preview alongside the input.
Tune the relief with the Depth Scale slider. The default is the model's raw output. Lower it for thin materials like leather or veneer where deep cuts would punch through, and raise it for thick wood or dramatic effects on acrylic. The 3D preview updates in real time, so you can match the visible relief depth to what your tool and material can actually handle. For 3 mm laser-engraved plywood, scales between 0.5x and 0.8x usually give clean results without charring.
If you only want part of the photo in the final piece, use the crop tool: rectangular for plaques, circular for medallions and round blanks. Circular crops export with the area outside the circle as transparent, which most laser software treats as "no engrave."
When the preview matches what you want, click Download Height Map. You get an 8-bit grayscale PNG named after your project, with an alpha channel where the crop made one. The PNG goes straight into LightBurn (image layer, grayscale mode), LaserGRBL (Grayscale conversion), and Vectric or Carveco (relief or component height-map import). Match the pixel dimensions to your engraving area at your machine's DPI: a 2000 x 2000 px map at 254 DPI covers about 200 x 200 mm.
Getting the best result
Do any AI edits in Photo Studio first, then remove the background as your final step before generating. The depth model dedicates its full range to whatever is in the frame, so isolating the subject means more depth resolution where it counts and a cleaner edge for circular crops. Keep background removal last, because a PHOTON edit can re-introduce a removed background, while the more advanced WAVELENGTH model does not.
Run a test engrave on scrap before committing to good stock. Baltic birch plywood takes depth well, bamboo scorches at the same settings, and cast acrylic frosts cleanly while extruded acrylic melts. The depth scale that suits one material will be wrong for another.
Use the photo-texture toggle on the 3D preview to check the alignment of fine features like eyes, nostrils, and lettering. If a nose looks flat, the source photo probably did not have enough side lighting to give the depth model what it needed, and that is a Photo Studio fix rather than an Embossing Studio one.