MOPALaserRasterVectorPower
HOLOGRAPHIC ETCHING LAB · SERIES 79

Turn light itself into the color palette.

Holographic Etching uses precisely spaced laser lines to create structural color that shifts with the light. Calibrate your material first, then translate artwork into fine diffraction-grating line fields.

▲ EXPERIMENTAL OPTICS MODE. Results depend on material, polish, lens, laser settings, lighting, and viewing angle. This lab will build a measured recipe library before it generates artwork.
01 · CALIBRATE

Generate a test grid

Create a labeled grid of pitch, line angle, speed, frequency, power, pulse width, and interval recipes for one material and lens combination.

02 · MEASURE

Photograph the swatch

Use a guided phone position, consistent lighting, and grid markers. The lab will correct perspective and sample the visible color from each tested recipe.

03 · SAVE

Build a recipe library

Save measured structural-color recipes with their material, finish, lens, and viewing setup. The same recipe can look different under different conditions.

04 · ETCH

Convert artwork to gratings

Map image color and brightness to calibrated pitch and line-angle fields, then export laser paths instead of ordinary filled color regions.

Calibration Grid Console

This first grid sweeps line angle and fill interval while copying one selected LightBurn setting onto each cell. Keep the laser, material finish, and lens setup stable while you test it.

Return to Color Rasterizer

Finished Grid Capture Console

After you laser the grid, photograph it and save the conditions that made those colors appear. This creates a reusable profile now, ready for the color-reading engine we will install later.

Recipe Measurement Console

This first analysis pass finds the grid, straightens it when it can see a clear border, samples the center of every numbered cell, and saves the observed photo color next to that cell’s interval and angle. Enter any crop value to make your crop the grid boundary, then trim tightly around the swatch. Review the preview before treating it as a recipe map.

Drag a green handle to reshape the grid. Click and drag inside the green outline to slide the whole grid over the photo. These corners override rotation and crop for the next analysis.

Click a clean, representative spot inside any swatch to move that cell’s sample point. Click Analyze Grid Photo again to resample using the blue points.

Recipe Palette Review

Keep the cells that produce clean, useful color. Give each one a memorable name, then save your chosen structural-color palette.

Holographic Artwork Console

Bring your artwork, the recipe profile you saved above, and the same LightBurn Material Library used for calibration. Each processed image pixel becomes a tiny square on its closest calibrated recipe layer, using that recipe’s measured Fill interval and angle.

This lab is informed by Ben Krasnow’s documented stainless-steel MOPA diffraction-grating work. We will build an original, calibration-first workflow around the same physical principles rather than integrate that project directly. Review the reference project ↗