Thanks Charlie, great reply. The Dragonfly did its job, a small test of cutting abilities and to impress friends with an easy carried piece. It worked.
As for using photos I’ve recently and rapidly become acutely of aware of the significance of height maps and the limit of grey scale. I cut a portrait. 😫 The detail was great but the facial shadows stuffed it. In researching this subject and 3D models I’m seeing a great need to learn more in photo editing and I’ll also try at some stage STL file generation with laser scanning. My iPhone apparently can do it. Also I have now a greater appreciation of the need to learn the power of your conveniently included pixel modification tools.
Successful machine carving as an artist is far more complex than I thought.
I’ll study your examples.
Thanks again. Russ