The Project: A Pub Sign for a Cabin in Lovells, Michigan
Hal, a woodworker in Lovells, Michigan, came to us with a beautiful mockup: a vintage pub-style sign for the "Thirsty Lads Club", complete with a hand holding a whiskey glass, Celtic corner knots, ornate flourishes, and layered typography. He wanted to carve it into a real wooden sign on his CNC machine using Easel Pro.
There was one problem: the mockup was a picture, not a toolpath. It looked like a finished sign, but no CNC machine on earth can carve a JPG.
The customer's starting point: a photorealistic mockup of the finished sign.
Why You Can't Carve a Picture
CNC software like Easel Pro, Carbide Create, or VCarve doesn't see pixels. It needs closed vector paths: mathematical outlines that tell the machine exactly where every edge of every letter, flourish, and illustration sits. A raster mockup, no matter how sharp, contains none of that information.
Auto-trace tools struggle with artwork like this. Wood texture, lighting, shadows, and bevels in the mockup confuse the tracer, and you end up with thousands of jagged micro-paths that carve terribly and take forever to machine. Artwork this detailed needs a manual redraw: a human looking at the design and rebuilding every shape as a clean path.
The auto-trace trap
Tracing a photo of a carved sign gives you vectors of the shadows and wood grain, not the design. For CNC work you need the flat, idealized artwork underneath the rendering, which usually only exists in a designer's head until someone redraws it.
The Vectorization: One Clean Compound Path
We redrew the entire sign by hand as a single-color vector: the typography with its swashes, the hand and glass illustration with all its line-art shading, the Celtic knots, the double border, and every ornament. The delivered files included AI, EPS, PDF, and SVG formats.
One detail matters a lot for CNC: the whole design was built as one compound path with no strokes, only fills. Letter counters (the holes inside letters like "o" and "a") are true holes in the path, not white shapes stacked on top. That means any CNC or laser software reads the shapes correctly, with no hidden overlaps to produce double-cut lines.
The hand-redrawn master vector: one compound path, fills only, no strokes.
The Relief Problem: The Machine Carved the Wrong Part
Hal imported the SVG into Easel Pro and hit a snag that catches almost everyone the first time they try relief carving. The software treated the filled shapes (the lettering and artwork) as the areas to cut, engraving the design down into the workpiece.
But the mockup shows the opposite: raised relief. The lettering stands proud of the surface while the background around it is pocketed away. In a standard vector file, the filled region is the artwork, so CNC software carves the artwork. For raised relief you need the filled region to be the background instead.
The Fix: An Inverted SVG Built for Relief Carving
The cleanest solution is a second file where the geometry is inverted. We placed a rectangle covering the whole artboard behind the artwork and subtracted the design from it. The result is a single path where the background is the filled shape and every letter and illustration is a hole in it.
The inverted relief file. Black is what the machine pockets away; the untouched areas become the raised design.
Because the master was a proper compound path, the inversion nests perfectly: the background pockets, the letters stay raised, and the counters inside letters pocket again, exactly as a real relief sign should. Import it, set one pocket cut to your relief depth (1/8" to 1/4" is typical for signs), and carve.
Bit strategy for detailed relief
Fine details like swash typography and Celtic knots need a small bit, but clearing a large background with a 1/16" bit takes hours. Use a two-stage carve: a larger bit (1/4") clears the open background fast, then a 1/16" detail bit finishes tight areas around the lettering.
The Alternative: Easel's Depth-0 Technique
If you only have the standard (non-inverted) vector, Easel Pro can still carve raised relief with a workaround:
1. Import the artwork and select every shape, then set its cut depth to 0. Zero-depth shapes are skipped by the toolpath generator.
2. Draw a rectangle around the whole design and send it to the back.
3. Set the rectangle to a pocket cut at your relief depth. Easel clears the rectangle but leaves the zero-depth shapes standing.
It works, but a purpose-built inverted file is less fiddly, transfers to any CNC software (not just Easel), and leaves no room for a missed shape to get carved by mistake. That's why we now include an inverted relief version whenever a customer tells us their vector is headed for raised relief carving.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I carve raised letters in Easel Pro?
There are two ways. The most reliable is to import an inverted SVG where the background is the filled shape, then set it to a pocket cut at your relief depth: the machine clears the background and leaves the lettering raised. The workaround with a standard file is to set every artwork shape to cut depth 0, draw a rectangle around the design, send it to the back, and set the rectangle to a pocket cut. Easel clears the rectangle but skips the zero-depth shapes.
What kind of SVG file do I need for CNC relief carving?
An inverted vector: the background is a single filled path and the lettering and artwork are holes cut into it. CNC software pockets the filled area, so the design is left standing proud. The file should be a fills-only compound path with no strokes, so counters inside letters (like the hole in an "o") nest correctly and carve as background.
What depth should a raised relief sign be carved?
For most wooden signs, 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch (about 3 to 6 mm) works well. Around 1/8 inch suits smaller indoor signs; 1/4 inch throws stronger shadows and reads better on larger or outdoor signs. Deeper than that adds machining time quickly without much visual gain.
Can I auto-trace a photo or mockup of a sign for CNC carving?
Usually not. Auto-trace tools pick up wood grain, shadows, and bevel highlights in the rendering and produce thousands of jagged micro-paths that carve badly. Detailed sign artwork needs a manual vector redraw: a clean, flat version of the design rebuilt by hand.
What bits should I use for a detailed relief carving?
Use a two-stage carve. A larger bit, around 1/4 inch, clears the open background quickly, then a 1/16 inch detail bit finishes the tight areas around lettering and fine ornaments. Easel Pro supports this natively with its two-stage carve feature.
Takeaways for Your Own CNC Sign Project
A mockup or photo is a design brief, not a cutting file. Detailed sign artwork needs a manual vector redraw before any machine can touch it.
Ask for fills-only compound paths. Strokes and stacked white shapes create phantom toolpaths in CNC software.
Decide early: engraved (design cut into the surface) or raised relief (background cut away). Raised relief needs an inverted file or the depth-0 workaround.
Plan a two-stage carve for detailed artwork: big bit for clearing, small bit for detail.
