Help & Beginner's Guide

What is a lithophane?

A lithophane is a 3D print that looks like a plain, pale panel in normal light — but reveals a detailed photo when you shine light through the back. It works because of thickness:

• Thick areas block more light → they look dark.
• Thin areas let more light through → they look bright.

This tool converts every pixel's brightness into a height, so dark parts of your photo print thick and bright parts print thin, then exports a printable STL for your slicer (Cura, PrusaSlicer, Bambu/Orca Studio, etc.).

What you'll need

Choosing a good photo

The photo matters more than any setting. Best results come from images that are:

• High contrast with a clear subject (faces, pets, silhouettes).
• Well lit, with the subject brighter than the background.
• Not too busy — fine background clutter disappears when backlit.
• Reasonably sharp, at least ~1000 px on the long edge.

If your photo is close but not quite there, the image editor below will crop it, straighten it and paint out whatever is spoiling it — before you make anything.

Editing your photo first

The Image Editor (under Tools) does the small fixes that make the difference, without sending you off to another program. It runs in your browser and your original picture is never uploaded.

• Crop tight. This is the big one. A lithophane samples a fixed grid whatever size you print it, so every pixel spent on background is detail not spent on the face. Cropping in is usually a bigger improvement than any slider on the generator page.
• Straighten first, crop second. Rotating leaves the picture at an angle inside its rectangle; cropping afterwards is how you keep the framing you actually wanted.
• Paint out distractions. A window or a lamp behind someone's head becomes the thinnest, brightest part of the finished print — it glows harder than the face does. Painting it a mid grey takes seconds and rescues the whole thing.
• Erase to transparent for a cut-out. The eraser makes a real hole, not a white patch, which matters here: white is a colour a lithophane can print and transparent is not. Pairs well with the shape masks.
• Clone stamp covers something with a patch of what sits beside it — the tidy way to remove a stray object rather than painting over it flat.

Leave brightness and contrast alone here. Every generator has its own image adjustments with a live brightness map beside them, and judging contrast against that map is far more reliable than judging it against the photo. Use the editor for what the generator cannot do — framing, rotation, and removing what should not be in the picture at all.

Quick start

1. Upload a photo (clear subject, good contrast works best).
2. Pick a style from the menu and a Quick Preset (start with High Detail or Balanced).
3. Click Preview to see the original and the brightness map.
4. Optionally choose a shape, a hanging hole, or a frame.
5. Click Generate STL and open the file in your slicer.

Tip: always click Preview after changing settings so the output reflects your latest choices.

Show me how

Reading about a slider is slower than watching one move. Every lithophane generator, and several of the tools, has a Show me how button in the bottom-right corner: it walks you through one complete job inside the real tool, filling the fields in as it goes and explaining each one as it highlights it.

It is not a video. Nothing is simulated — it is driving the actual controls, so when it finishes you are holding a real result you can build and download. Press Skip at any point and everything it set stays where it is, ready for you to change.

It is on every lithophane generator — flat, cylinder and panel, cone, cube, lantern, globe, multi-photo and the lid & pedestal builder — and on QR Tag, Cookie Cutter and Image to STL.

If you have never used the site before, start with QR Tag: it needs no file from you, so it runs the whole way through by itself and you watch a finished tag appear. Where a step does need a picture, the walkthrough waits and the Next button lights up once you have chosen one.

The lid builder's walkthrough is worth doing before your first lid. It is built around printing a test ring first — five minutes that are the difference between a lid that fits and a four-hour one that does not.

Lithophane styles

• Flat — a framed flat photo; supports shapes, hanging hole and frame.
• Cylinder / Panel — wrap one photo around a full cylinder (lamp shade) or, by lowering the arc, a curved standing panel.
• Cone — wrap a photo around a tapered lampshade. Set base Ø, top Ø and height (equal diameters = a straight cylinder).
• Multi — 2–4 photos wrapped around a single cylinder.
• Cube — 1–4 photos on the walls of a closed box (1 = all sides the same).
• Lantern — 1–6 photos around a 3–12 sided lantern (photos repeat to fill faces).
• Globe — 1–4 photos wrapped around a sphere (lamp with a bottom opening).
• Lid & Pedestal — make a matching cap or base for any of the above.

Quick presets

• High Detail — finest result (more triangles, larger file, slower). Best for portraits.
• Balanced — good detail with a reasonable file size and speed.
• Fast — quickest preview/print, lower detail. Good for testing.
• Large Format — tuned for bigger prints.

Image adjustments

• Contrast — increases the difference between light and dark; higher = more dramatic relief.
• Brightness — shifts the whole image lighter or darker.
• Gamma — fine-tunes mid-tones without crushing highlights/shadows.
• Blur — smooths noise and speckles for cleaner prints.
• Edge Enhance — sharpens fine detail (use sparingly).
• Flip Horizontally — mirrors the image (useful depending on print orientation).

Tones & auto-optimise

A lithophane is only ever as good as its range of tones. The chart under your photo shows two things at once: the grey shape is your original photo, and the coloured shape is what your settings are actually doing to it. Drag brightness, contrast or gamma and the coloured shape moves while the grey one stays put, so you can see exactly what you are changing.

What you are looking for is a spread that reaches most of the way across without piling up hard against either end. Pushed up against the left, the dark parts have all merged into one solid black and no light will come through them. Piled against the right, the light parts have gone to plain white and the detail in them is simply gone — and no printer setting brings either back.

Optimise for lithophane does it for you: it reads the photo, then sets brightness, contrast and gamma to spread the tones across the range a lithophane can actually print. It is a good starting point on almost any photo, and you can carry on adjusting afterwards — it sets the sliders, it does not lock them.

Size & thickness

• Width / Height (mm) — the physical size of a rectangular lithophane.
• Maximum Thickness — thickness at the darkest areas (typ. 3–4 mm).
• Minimum Thickness — thickness at the brightest areas (typ. 0.6–0.8 mm). Don't go below ~0.5 mm or light won't pass cleanly.
• Base Height / Frame — solid base under the relief.
• Mesh Subdivision — higher = smoother surface but bigger file and longer processing.

Shapes

Beyond a plain rectangle you can crop the lithophane to: Circle, Oval, Heart, Diamond, Hexagon, Octagon, Star, Rounded Rectangle, Arch, and Egg.

1. Select a shape — a blue outline appears on the preview.
2. Drag the shape on the preview to position it over the part of the photo you want.
3. Set Shape Width / Height (mm) for the physical size.

The exported STL matches the on-screen shape exactly, and the edges are watertight (closed) so they slice cleanly.

Hanging hole

Tick Add hanging hole to punch a hole near the top — perfect for ornaments and keychains. Set the diameter and the distance from the top. Works with any shape except a plain Rectangle.

Raised frame / border

Tick Add raised frame to add a raised rim around the shape edge (shown as an orange dashed line on the preview).

• Frame Width — how wide the rim is.
• Frame Height — how tall the rim stands. It uses the same scale as relief thickness, so to make the border clearly stand proud of the photo, set it a bit higher than your Maximum Thickness.
• Corner style — flat, beveled, or rounded profile (flat photos).

Two-colour prints

On the Flat generator, tick 🎨 Two-colour print (filament change) to print the base in one colour and the photo in another on a single-extruder printer. It shows the exact Z height to add a colour change in your slicer (PrusaSlicer/Orca: right-click the layer; Cura: Pause at height / Filament change) — load colour 1 first, swap to colour 2 at the prompt, and print standing up. For truly separate colour bodies on an AMS/MMU, use Send to 3D Designer, add a coloured backplate and export 3MF. For a lithophane in full colour, see the next section.

Colour lithophanes (CMYK)

Colour lithophane (CMYK) (menu: Lithophane → Colour (CMYK)) makes a lithophane that lights up in the photo’s own colours, on a printer with four filaments — a Bambu Lab AMS, a Creality CFS, a Prusa MMU. Thin cyan, magenta and yellow layers sit at the front, and a white lithophane behind them sets light and dark exactly as a plain one does. There is no black filament: the white’s thickness does the dark parts.

• Pick your filaments. Presets for Bambu Lab’s PLA Basic CMYK lithophane bundle and for Creality’s colours; change any colour to match your own spools, and choose which filament slot each one is loaded in.
• The preview shows it lit from behind, in colour, plus the parts in 3D (pulled apart shows where each colour goes). It is an estimate: real colours depend on your filaments.
• Download a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, Creality Print or PrusaSlicer — one object, each colour its own part on its own filament, with thin layers and 100% infill already set — or a ZIP of four STLs for any other slicer.
• Print it as it comes: lying flat, the colour face down on the bed. That face is the front. 0.1 mm layers (0.08 with a 0.2 mm nozzle) give each colour more shades.
• Set the first layer to match. Each colour is only a few layers thick, so the colours are made for one exact first-layer height — the same as the layers, unless you pick another on the page. Set it in your slicer (Initial layer height; PrusaSlicer: First layer height): the file cannot. Left at the usual 0.2 mm, the front colours print wrong — a thin cyan disappears, so pale blues come out pink.
• Look at the smooth side, the one that was on the bed, with the light shining into the bumpy white side. From the bumpy side the picture reads back to front.
• Tune it after a test print. If one colour comes out weak or too strong, turn its strength up or down; colour layer thickness moves all three at once.
• Bambu Lab’s frame: one click sizes it to 144 × 108 mm, to fit their lithophane frame and backlight board.

It is a normal tool: anyone can build and preview one, and the download is a print-tool run — a few a day on a free account, unlimited for Supporters.

Previews

• Brightness Map — shows where the print will be thick (dark) vs thin (light).
• Backlit Preview — simulates how it will look with light shining through.
• 3D Preview — an interactive, auto-rotating 3D view. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom. It reflects the shape, hole, and frame. (Relief is slightly exaggerated so it's easy to see.)

Send to 3D Designer

On the photo generators (flat, cylinder, cone, cube, globe, lantern, multi) you'll see a Send to 3D Designer button next to Generate. It hands your finished lithophane straight into the in-browser 3D Designer so you can:

• Add a frame, stand, base or hanging loop around it.
• Combine it with other shapes, text or parts.
• Lay it flat, check printability and export as STL / 3MF / OBJ.

Positioning your photo

Every generator used to centre your photo automatically and crop whatever did not fit, which is fine until the subject is not in the middle. The Align photo panel lets you place it yourself: drag the picture inside the crop box, scroll to zoom in. The bright area is what gets printed.

• Set the size first. Width and height decide the shape of the crop, so changing them after you have framed the shot will move the framing.
• Crop shape does the sums for you. Rather than working out millimetres, pick square, portrait, landscape, 5×7, 16:9 and so on. It changes the printed width and height to match, keeping the longest side you already set — so a 150×200 mm panel set to square becomes 200×200, not 150×150. The crop box is drawn from those dimensions, which is why it has to work this way: reshaping the box on its own would show you a crop the printer never makes. It appears on the flat maker, which is the one whose print is a single rectangle you choose the proportions of. The wrap-around shapes — cylinder, cone, globe, lantern — have no crop box to reshape, and the cube takes its proportions from the box dimensions instead.
• Preview size changes the editor, not the print. Drag it bigger for fiddly framing, or smaller if the panel does not fit your screen. It is remembered in your browser, so you set it once. Nothing about the model changes.
• You can type the numbers. X and Y run from −1 (hard left or top) through 0 (centred) to +1 (hard right or bottom), with zoom from 1× to 4×. Useful when you want two tags framed identically.
• Leave it alone and nothing changes. Untouched, the crop is exactly the centred one the tools have always produced.
• On the multi-photo makers — cube, lantern, globe, multi-cylinder — the Which photo selector chooses which one you are positioning.

My Projects & templates

If you make the same personalised product over and over, this is the part of the site that saves you the most time. Set a job up once — size, thickness, frame, text, base, and the photo framing — then press Save. Opening it later brings back the finished job, photo included.

For the next customer: open the project, press Replace photo, pick the new picture. Everything else stays exactly where it was, including the framing. Change the engraved name if there is one, and generate.

• Save updates the project you have open; Save as new always makes another one. There is a duplicate button on every row as well.
• Tick Reusable template for the ones you start from repeatedly — they sort to the top of the list and are badged.
• Projects are listed per tool, so the ones you made on the cube maker do not clutter the flat maker. Cylinder and Panel keep separate lists, because they are different products.
• Your photos are private to your account, and deleting a project deletes its photos with it. Making a lithophane still never uploads your picture — that only happens when you choose to save it to your account, either with a project or by turning on the media gallery in your account settings, which is off unless you switch it on.

Media gallery

A place to keep the photos you use, so you can pick one again instead of finding the file each time. With it switched on, every generator gets a Gallery button beside the file box. This is your own private store of photos — not the public Gallery on the main menu, where members show what they have printed.

• Photos are added as you upload them. There is no separate "add to gallery" step: choose a picture on any generator and, if the gallery is on, a copy is kept.
• Each copy is shrunk first. Photos are stored at up to 2048 px on the long edge, which is the largest size a lithophane can actually use — so a phone photo takes a few hundred KB rather than several MB.
• Free accounts get 50 MB, which is a few hundred pictures at that size. Supporters have no limit.
• Manage it from your account. Your account has a Manage gallery button that opens the whole thing in a window: add pictures straight into it, rename them so you can tell one grandchild from another, open one in the image editor, or delete them.
• Editing keeps one copy. Open a picture in the editor from the gallery, change it, and press Save back to my gallery — it replaces the picture rather than leaving you with two nearly identical ones.
• Delete anything, any time. Individual pictures from the gallery window, or the whole lot with one button on your account page — and that button works whether the gallery is switched on or off.

Who can see it: only you. The files are kept outside anything the web server will hand out, and every request for one checks that the picture belongs to the account asking. There is no address anybody can guess. This is the same arrangement project photos already use, for the same reason — these are usually pictures of people.

Settings file

Click Save Settings (.txt) to download a text file listing every setting used (size, thickness, shape, hole, frame, image adjustments, etc.). Keep it next to your STL so you can reproduce or tweak a print later.

Free & Supporter

Everything here is free to use — every lithophane shape, every tool and the full 3D Designer. Building, previewing and editing are never limited. A free account is needed to download files, and there are 10 downloads a month.

• Free (registered): 10 downloads a month, shared between lithophane STLs, 3D print tool files and 3D Designer exports, starting again on the 1st of each month. The Designer also keeps 2 saved designs per day in your account — saving the same design again that day costs nothing, and File → Save to file keeps as many copies on your own computer as you like. The AI model generator is locked.
• Building and previewing is always free. On the 3D print tools — Image to STL, Text to STL, Engrave, the image editor, the converter and the rest — you can try settings and spin the preview as much as you like. A daily export is only counted when you download. The same is true in the 3D Designer: modelling, saving a design and sharing it cost nothing, and only exporting a file counts.
• 50 MB of media gallery storage if you switch the gallery on, which is a few hundred photos at the size they are stored. Supporters have no limit.
• Calibration & test prints are completely free — they never use a daily export. (A free login is still needed to download, like any STL on the site.)
• Supporter: a voluntary donation unlocks unlimited lithophanes, unlimited tool and Designer exports, and the AI 3D model generator for 30 days. See the Supporter page for details — it's what keeps the site running and free for everyone.

Refer a friend

Every account has a referral link, on Your account. Send it to somebody who prints. When they register with it and confirm their email address:

• You get 5 days of Supporter.
• They start with 2 days.

Days are added on top of any Supporter time you already have — they extend it, never shorten it. The link carries the code for them, and there is a box on the registration form for anyone who was given a code on paper instead.

What the free days include

Nearly everything Supporter unlocks: unlimited lithophanes, unlimited tool and Designer exports. The one difference is the AI 3D model generator — Supporter time earned through referrals includes 2 AI generations in total, which is enough to see what it does. Paying for Supporter lifts that to 5 a day (10 with Supporter Plus).

Why the difference: every AI generation costs us money to run, which is exactly the sort of thing that gets abused if it is handed out for signing people up. The rest costs nothing to give away, so it is not capped.

The rules, plainly

• Nothing counts until the email is confirmed. Registering is not enough.
• One payout per person, for ever. A friend can only ever be counted once, however many times a link is clicked.
• You cannot refer yourself — not with your own code and not with your own email address.
• Two accounts opened on the same connection at the same time do not count. If you and a family member genuinely sign up months apart on the same home line, that is fine.
• Up to 5 a month.

Your account page lists everyone who has joined on your link, the days you have earned, and how many of this month's 5 are used. If one did not count, it says so and gives the reason, rather than leaving you to guess where the days went.

Gallery: show your prints

The Gallery on the main menu is where members show what they have printed. Anyone can look, and clicking a picture shows it full size. Post your own from your account page: every post that is approved adds 1 day of Supporter to your account.

• A picture or a short video. JPG, PNG or WebP up to 5 MB, or an MP4 or WebM clip up to 25 MB.
• Say what it is. A title, and if you like a few words about it — the filament, the layer height, who it was for. Bold, italic, links and lists work; anything else is taken out.
• A person checks every post before it appears. Nothing shows straight away, and that is not a fault — it is in the queue. The Supporter days arrive when it is approved, not when you upload.
• Up to 10 a month. Every post counts toward that, including one that is not approved, and the count starts again on the first of the month.

Your account page lists everything you have posted and where each one is: Waiting, In the gallery, or Not used with the reason if one was given. The public page shows your name next to a post, never your email address.

Your account page

Your account — the gear icon at the top right once you are signed in — is in four tabs:

• Account — where you stand: your plan, and if you are a Supporter, the date it runs to. Four figures: Supporter days left, days earned from referrals, and how many of your gallery posts are in the gallery or waiting to be approved. Then your referral link and who has joined on it, your payments, the media gallery switch and the Wall of Supporters.
• Post to the gallery — send a print to the Gallery, and see what you have posted.
• My 3D models — the models you have made with Photo to 3D, kept to download again.
• Change password — or Set a password, for an account that has none yet.

Accessories

Accessories lists the bits that finish a lithophane off — LED bases, charging ports, stands and frames. It is a catalogue, not a shop: nothing is bought on this site, there is no basket to pay from and no card is ever asked for. Every price is an estimate in US dollars and excludes postage, because the real figure depends on size, material and where it is going.

• Two ways to look at it. Grid is one product per row — small photo, description, package size and price side by side, which is the quickest way to compare. Gallery gives each product a large photo, two across, for browsing by picture. The page always opens in Grid.
• Search narrows the list as you type, matching the title, the description and the package size. Every word has to appear somewhere, so “stand oak” finds the oak stand whichever order you type it in.
• Click a photo to see it full size.
• Package size says how a product is sold — “5 pieces per pack”, “sold singly”. Where it is blank, ask.

Wanting something that is not listed — a different size, a finish, a quantity — is fine. Say so in the notes on either form below.

Asking for a price

There are two ways to ask, and which you want depends on how many things you are asking about.

One product — Enquire

Enquire on any product opens a short form. No account needed. Give your name, email and where it would ship to, add anything useful in the notes, and it comes to us by email.

Several products — Add to quotation

Add to quotation collects products into one request instead of sending a separate enquiry for each. Add as many as you like, set a quantity against each one, then send the lot together from the Quotation page.

• This one needs a free account. A quotation gets built up over more than one visit, so it has to be kept somewhere — and that means an account. It is kept on the account rather than in the browser, so a list started on a laptop is still there on a phone. Registering is free.
• The Quotation link appears in the menu with a count as soon as there is something on it, and goes away again when there is not.
• The estimated total adds up the products that have a listed price. Anything marked price on enquiry is counted separately and said so plainly, rather than being quietly treated as free.
• Sending gives you a reference like Q260908-K4XP. Quote it if you reply about the same request later.

The delivery address

Both forms ask the same thing, and the country is required — postage cannot be worked out without it. Choose the country and the state or province list fills in for that country; choose a state and the city list fills in for that state. Countries that have no states in the list simply let you type it instead.

The city list holds towns and cities, not suburbs, so if yours is not there put it in the notes along with the postal code — that is the field couriers actually price on.

Image to STL

Image to STL traces the outline of a picture and pulls it up into a solid shape. Drop in a PNG, JPG, WebP or SVG and pick one of three styles:

• Solid shape — the outline extruded straight up. Keychains, badges, magnets, cookie stamps.
• Raised on a plate — the artwork standing proud of a backing plate, with a border and rounded corners you choose. Signs and wall art.
• Stencil — the artwork cut out of a plate, to spray or paint through.

Contrast is everything. A black-on-white logo traces perfectly; a photograph of a person does not, because there is no single brightness that separates them from the background. Photographs belong in the lithophane generators, which use every grey level instead of one cut. Transparent PNGs are the easiest input of all — the cut-out edge is already exact, so the threshold barely matters.

Text to STL

Text to STL turns typed text into a printable model: name plates, door signs, keyring tags, fridge magnets and spray stencils. It uses any font installed on your computer — pick from the list or type a font name — with bold, italic, letter spacing, multiple lines and alignment.

Sizes are measured on the letters themselves, not on the font's invisible box, so 20 mm tall means 20 mm tall whichever font you choose. With more than one line, that height covers the whole block.

Add a hanging hole for a keyring or hook and the plate grows to make room for it, so the border you set around the lettering stays exactly as you set it.

Engrave & emboss

Engrave & Emboss puts a name, logo or picture onto a model you already have — cut into the surface, or raised out of it. Load an STL, choose text or a picture, pick which face it goes on, then drag it into place on an outline of your own model.

• The depth follows the surface. 0.8 mm deep means 0.8 mm everywhere — on a cylinder or a sphere just as much as on a flat panel.
• Only the face you pick is touched, so the artwork will not come through mirrored on the back.
• Engraved text usually reads better than embossed on a print, because the recess casts a shadow. Emboss when the surface will be sanded or painted afterwards.
• 0.6–1 mm is plenty of depth. Deeper is rarely more legible and takes longer.

Print on fabric

Print on Fabric makes lace cards — wedding invitations, place cards, RSVPs — by printing a pattern onto tulle, organza or chiffon. It gives the laser-cut look without a laser cutter, and without the connecting bridges a cut-out design normally needs.

The print runs in two halves. A few tenths of a millimetre go down first, the printer pauses and parks, you lay the fabric over the top and pull it taut, and then the rest prints over it. Plastic squeezes through the weave and welds to the plastic below, trapping the fabric in a sandwich.

• The grip is mechanical, not glue. That is why it only works with an open weave — tulle, organza, netting. Nothing can grip through a dense fabric like cotton or felt.
• Floating pieces are allowed, unlike everywhere else on this site. A leaf touching nothing still prints, because the fabric is holding it.
• The page writes the pause for you. Download the G-code and the stop is already at the right layer, with the head parked where you can reach it — that is the part that is fiddly to set up by hand.
• Fabric must be drum-taut. Magnets on a steel sheet, or tape well outside the print. Any wrinkle is one the nozzle will catch.

Five lace patterns are built in and all of them are adjustable, or bring your own artwork and add names and a date. Expect to lose a couple while you find the right fabric tension — print a small place card first rather than a full invitation.

Gridfinity bins & baseplates

Gridfinity is an open storage standard: bins on a 42 mm grid that drop into matching baseplates, so a bin you print today sits in a plate you printed last year, or one somebody else made. It is the tidiest answer there is to a drawer full of loose parts.

Start with the space, not the bin. Measure the drawer, type the two figures into Have a space to fill? and press Fit. It rounds down to whole grid units and tells you what is left over — because a bin three millimetres too wide is no use to anyone.

What to make

• Bin — the box things go in. Choose how many units across, deep and tall.
• Baseplate — the tray of sockets the bins drop into, which is what stops them sliding about.
• Lid — a cover that drops into a bin's stacking lip. The bin it goes on needs that lip ticked.
• Vase — the same bin printed as a spiral. See below, it works differently.

Inside the bin

• Compartments — split it into a grid of smaller pockets.
• Pocket shape — rectangular, round for jars and tape, hexagonal for sockets and nuts, or a rounded slot for drill bits, dowels and pens. The bin stays a standard Gridfinity rectangle whichever you pick.
• Label tab — a shelf across the opening to write on or stick a label to. Its underside is 45°, so it needs no supports.
• Finger scoop — a ramp at the front, so a flat thing slides out instead of being picked at with a fingernail.
• Stacking lip — a socket on top that the next bin's foot drops into, so bins stack without sliding off. It adds 4.4 mm to the height.
• Solid blank — no cavity at all, for carving your own shape into.

Holding it down

The published standard asks for a hole at all four corners of every grid unit — all four, so the bin holds whichever way round you drop it in. Tick magnet holes for 6×2 mm discs, or screw holes for M3. There are two fits: glued in, or pressed in with a tighter bore and no glue — the press fit wants a printer that is in tune, so if a magnet will not go, print the glued size rather than forcing it.

Free size

A drawer that is not on any grid can have a plain box in exact millimetres instead. It is clearly labelled as leaving the standard, and it drops the foot — a foot that does not line up with the grid cannot sit in a baseplate, and a part that looks Gridfinity without being it would be worse than one that plainly is not.

Vase-mode bins

A vase-mode bin is printed as one continuous spiral of a single wall: no layer changes, no infill, no retractions, the nozzle never stops moving. That is where the time saving comes from.

A spiral cannot change its outline's height partway round, which is exactly what the chamfered foot needs — so it comes as two files. The body is spiralled; the foot is printed normally and glued on. They are separate downloads because a slicer's spiral vase setting applies to the whole plate, and putting both on the bed together would print the foot hollow too. The file names tell you which is which.

1. Set the nozzle diameter first. The spiral draws a wall exactly that wide whatever you model, and the base is built to fit it.
2. Download both parts.
3. Slice the body with spiral vase on and no bottom layers. Use a brim — a thin open outline has very little holding it to the bed.
4. Slice the base normally, then glue the two together.

Stands, easels & lids

A curved panel will not stand up on its own, and a cylinder lithophane over a lamp usually wants something on top. Lids, stands & frames makes all three.

• Lid — a cap that sits on top of a cylinder or lantern, so you are not looking down into a lit tube.
• Stand — a slotted base that a flat or curved panel drops into. Give it the panel's thickness and it cuts the slot to suit.
• Easel — a folding back leg, the way a photo frame stands. Takes less filament and less bed than a stand, and leans the panel back so it catches the light.

Set the panel's width and thickness and the holder is built around them. Print with the slot facing up so it needs no supports.

Cookie & clay cutter

Cookie & Clay Cutter turns a picture into a cutter. Feed it a bold silhouette — a leaf, a letter, a gingerbread man, a logo — and it builds a wall that follows the outline. The preview is a plan view: blue is the blade, tan is the biscuit you will actually cut.

• Where the wall sits matters more than it sounds. Outside the line keeps the biscuit the same size as your picture and is almost always the right answer. On or inside the line make it progressively smaller.
• The bottom is thinner on purpose. A wall of even thickness squashes dough rather than cutting it, so the last couple of millimetres taper to a fine edge and widen into the body above.
• The rim is for pressing on. A wider flange at the top stops a tall cutter flexing under your hand. It has to be wider than the wall to do anything.
• Print it standing up, exactly as generated. No supports, no raft — it is a vertical wall, so it prints as a continuous spiral of perimeters.

QR tag & keyring

QR Tag & Keyring turns a link into a printable tag — a menu, a wedding photo album, a business card, or a label on the back of a lithophane pointing at the pictures behind it. Add a line of raised text above or below, and either a round hole for a keyring or a keyhole hanger for a wall.

The geometry is the easy part. Two things decide whether a printed QR code actually scans, and the page checks both for you:

• The squares have to be big enough for your nozzle. Below roughly two extrusion widths per square the printer smears the pattern and no amount of error correction rescues it. The page tells you the millimetres per square for the code you have actually generated — which changes with the length of your link and the error correction level, not just with the tag size.
• A scanner reads light and dark, not height. This is the one that catches people out: a raised code in a single colour relies on shadow alone and many phones simply refuse it. Change filament at the height the page gives you — light plate, dark squares — and it reads every time.

Scan the on-screen preview with your phone before you print. If it will not read on a screen, it will not read in plastic, and finding out there costs nothing.

Save filament on any STL

The 3D Print Tools (under Tools in the menu) take any STL — not just lithophanes — and remove material from the inside, so it prints faster and uses far less filament. A solid model is usually mostly wasted plastic.

Two things worth knowing before you start:

• It runs in your browser. The whole conversion happens on your machine; your original model is never uploaded.
• Set the size first. Every measurement afterwards — wall thickness, hole size, strut thickness — is in millimetres on the finished model, so scaling later would change what those numbers mean.

Because it runs on your own machine, a very large or very detailed model needs a reasonably modern computer. If a setting would produce something too big to build, the tool says so and suggests what to change rather than freezing.

Which mode to pick

Settings that matter most: wall thickness (1.2–2 mm suits most FDM prints — thinner walls warp), and a drain hole if you print in resin or SLS, so trapped material can escape. Higher resolution captures finer detail but uses more memory and time.

Rotating a model

STL files carry no agreed "up" direction, so a model exported from some programs arrives lying on its side. Under the Original model preview you'll find Rotate model with X, Y and Z boxes, quick +90° buttons and a Reset.

The rotation is applied to the real file, not just the picture — so what you see in the preview is what gets converted or sliced. Orientation matters for printing too: see Orientation below.

Print simulator

The 3D Print Simulator slices an STL the way your printer would and shows you the result before you commit any filament. Walls are drawn in orange, infill in blue, and you can drag the slider or press play to watch it build up layer by layer.

Set your own layer height (0.2 mm is the usual default), nozzle diameter (0.4 mm on most printers), number of perimeters, infill percentage and bed size. It reports the estimated print time, filament length and weight, and warns you if the model does not fit your bed. You can download the G-code at the end.

Print cost & quote

Selling prints? Print cost & quote (menu: Tools → Sell your prints) works out what a print really costs and what to charge. Put in the grams and the print time from your slicer, or drop in an STL for an estimate.

It adds up the filament, the electricity, wear on the machine, your time, an allowance for prints that fail and the packaging, then puts your markup on top and rounds the price. Set your own rates once — filament price per kilo, power, hourly rates, currency and your business name — and, signed in, they are kept.

Add each print as a line on a quote with the customer's name and how long the price stands, then print it or save it as a PDF from the print dialog. Only the quote itself is printed, on one page.

Calibrate, fingerprint, check: how they fit together

Most failed prints are not bad models. They are a model asking for something the printer and the roll of filament on it cannot do: a wall thinner than it lays down solid, an overhang steeper than it holds, a temperature that strings. Four tools on the site work as one loop to find those limits once and then use them every time:

The first three are about shape: will the model print, and with what settings. The fourth is about light: how a lithophane's tones come out. They answer different questions, so a fingerprint does not replace a filament profile, or the other way round.

Calibration prints

Calibration & Test Prints (menu: Tools → Calibration & test prints → Calibration prints) makes seventeen tuning models. Most printing problems are the printer, not the model, and each of these isolates one thing so you can see it.

How the page works

1. Pick a test. They are grouped Start here, Material, Geometry and Fit.
2. Set it up. Each test has its own settings — the range of temperatures, the angles, the sizes — and the 3D view updates as you change them. The values are printed on the model, so you never have to count bands to work out which floor was 210 °C.
3. Download the STL and print it. The models are made in your browser. Downloading needs a free account, but calibration prints never use your daily allowance.
4. Read it. Under the model, How to read it says what a good result looks like, what a bad one means, and which setting to change. When a test gives a fingerprint reading, a line underneath shows what your fingerprint in use has recorded for it, with a link straight to that box.

Print them the right way

• Work in order. First layer, then dimensions, then temperature, then flow, then retraction. Each test depends on the ones before it: a retraction test on a printer with a bad first layer is wasted filament.
• Change one thing at a time. Tuning temperature and flow together tells you nothing.
• Use the settings you really print with — the same layer height, speed and material. A test printed slowly and carefully will not tell you what your real prints do.
• Keep them. Write the date and filament on the back. A drawer of old test prints is the fastest way to spot when something has drifted.

All seventeen, and what each one tells you

The last column is the fingerprint box the result goes in. Tests without one are for diagnosing a problem rather than recording a limit.

Printer fingerprint

The numbers you read off the calibration prints describe one printer with one filament. The printer fingerprint (menu: Tools → Calibration & test prints → Printer fingerprint) keeps them, so you never have to remember them — and so the Print Doctor can judge models against what your printer actually did instead of a rule of thumb. A fingerprint is kept with your account, so it needs a free one.

Making one

1. Which printer, which filament. The printer's name, the nozzle size (it matters — see below), the material, the filament (brand and colour is plenty), and optionally the bed size and a note such as the layer height.
2. What your test prints showed. One box per reading, each with a line on how to read it and a link that opens its test print. Fill in what you have and leave the rest empty: an empty box means not measured yet, never zero. Nobody prints all twelve in an evening — a fingerprint fills in over days.
3. Save. A reading outside what is possible (a 400 °C nozzle, say) is refused with the allowed range. A reading that is possible but probably misread is saved, and flagged under Worth a second look:
   • a thinnest solid wall thinner than the nozzle — usually the first wall that appeared rather than the first that was solid;
   • an overhang past 75° — usually read from horizontal instead of vertical;
   • a flow rate below 80 % or above 120 % — worth measuring again.

The twelve readings

One per printer and filament, and the one in use

• Keep a fingerprint for each printer with each filament — up to 20. A different roll can overhang, bridge and string quite differently on the same printer.
• The first one you save is the one in use. After that, press Use this beside another to switch, or Use none of them to switch them all off. The list shows how many of the twelve each one has.
• Edit a fingerprint any time to add a reading or update one. Emptying a box takes that reading away.

What uses it

• The Print Doctor fills in its two limits from the fingerprint: the minimum wall from your thinnest solid wall, and the overhang limit from your steepest clean overhang. With no thin-wall reading it uses two widths of that fingerprint's nozzle (0.8 mm on 0.4 mm, 1.2 mm on 0.6 mm); with no overhang reading it leaves the overhang slider as it is. It also quotes your support gap as the top Z distance, and uses the material to estimate how many grams of support a model needs. The report says so: “0.9 mm is the thinnest wall your printer printed solid in this filament”.
• Every calibration print shows the reading recorded for it in the fingerprint in use, or that none is recorded yet, with a link straight to its box.
• The rest are for you — the temperature, flow, retraction, elephant's foot and hole numbers go into your slicer profile for that filament (the table above says where), and the bridge, pin, text and clearance numbers are the limits to design within.

Print doctor

The Print Doctor (menu: Tools → Change an STL you have → Print doctor) answers the question worth asking before a six-hour print: will this actually work? It runs entirely in your browser — the model is never uploaded. It works through six steps.

1. Choose an STL, and stand it the way it will print

Drop in the STL. The orientation boxes (X, Y, Z, with 90° buttons) set how the part sits on the plate. It matters: overhangs, supports and bed contact are all judged from the way it stands.

2. Set your printer's limits

Run the checks needs a free account. On the free plan it uses one of the 3D print 10 free downloads a month; Supporters have no limit (see Free & Supporter). Change the orientation or a limit afterwards and the report is marked out of date until you run it again.

3. Diagnosis

The 3D view switches between Model, Wall thickness (a colour map of what is too thin), Overhangs (shaded by how far each surface leans) and Supports. The report lists:

Models over 500,000 triangles skip the watertight checks in a browser tab; thickness and overhangs are still measured.

4. Supports

Straight after the checks it plans the supports for the way the model stands: where every column would go (the Supports view), how much plastic, and which kind to use. It decides like this:

• No supports when the overhang is under 5 mm² — a sliver prints on its own.
• Paint supports on when it is in three spots or fewer and no more than 200 mm²: use your slicer's support painting (“support enforcers”) there, with automatic supports off.
• Otherwise tree or normal (grid), weighed up:
  • towards tree: over a quarter of it would stand on the part itself (counts most — every column there scars a face), six or more separate spots, columns over 40 mm tall, or mostly sloping and curved surfaces;
  • towards normal: 60% or more flat ceiling, nearly all of it standing on the plate, or short columns (under 15 mm on average).

It shows Why in plain words, the area needing support, an estimate of the support plastic in grams, how much would stand on the part, the tallest column and the number of spots — and the settings to use:

• Support threshold — your overhang limit (your fingerprint's, if it has an overhang reading).
• Top Z distance — your fingerprint's support gap if recorded; otherwise about one layer height, plus 0.05 mm for PETG, which sticks to its supports.
• Interface layers, support type, and whether support on build plate only would leave parts of it unsupported.

If standing the model another way needs at least 20% less support, it says how much less and offers Stand it that way.

5. A better way up

Find a better orientation tries 260 ways up on a simplified copy of the model, scores each by the overhang area it would need supported, and shows the best three that are genuinely different. Applying one fills in the rotation boxes in step 1; run the checks again to see it scored in full. Check that the side ending up on the plate is one you can live with.

6. Repair

• Quick fix drops degenerate and duplicate triangles, makes every face agree which way is out, and turns inside-out shells round. It moves no vertex, so sharp edges stay sharp. Try this first.
• Rebuild re-creates the surface from a distance field, which resolves non-manifold edges, overlapping bodies, self-intersections and inside-out pockets in one go. It re-meshes everything, so edges soften slightly — raise Detail for a closer match.
• Download the repaired STL, then load it back in to confirm the checks pass.

Filament calibration — the one that changes your lithophanes

Two rolls of white PLA can be very different things. One lets light through at 2 mm; the other is still glowing at 4 mm. That is the single biggest reason a lithophane comes out muddy on one roll and washed out on the next, and no amount of adjusting the photo fixes it — because the fault is in the translation from tone to thickness, not in the photo.

Filament calibration (menu: Tools → Calibration & test prints → Filament calibration) measures it once, per roll:

1. Print the strip. A staircase of known thicknesses, thin at one end and thick at the other, each step 16 mm long and 25 mm across. Set the thinnest step, the thickest and how many steps (0.6 to 3.2 mm in 10 steps by default); the page lists the steps and shows the strip in 3D. Print it in the filament you are calibrating, at 100% infill, with your usual lithophane layer height.
2. Hold it up to the light you will actually display the lithophane with. Not a window, if the lithophane is going on a lamp.
3. Find three steps and note the thickness written on each:
   • the last washed-out step — the thickest one still too bright to show any detail;
   • the first solid-black step — the thinnest one already too dark to show any;
   • and the step that looks half-way between them (the middle-grey step).
4. Type them in and save the profile under the filament's name. A graph shows the curve they make.

The first two set the range — how thin is as bright as it gets, how thick is as dark. The middle-grey one is optional but it is the one that does most of the work: it bends the curve, so the mid-tones land where your eye expects instead of bunching towards black. Leave it out and the correction is a straight line between the two ends, which is better than nothing but not by as much.

What it does to the lithophane

For each tone in the photo, from 0 (white) to 1 (black), the thickness becomes

thickness = washed-out + (solid-black − washed-out) × toneγ

where γ is worked out so that a middle tone lands exactly on your middle-grey step. If the middle-grey step sits exactly half-way, γ is 1 and nothing changes — a profile only ever changes the output when you have measured something. γ is kept between 0.35 and 3, so a misread step bends the curve rather than inverting the picture.

Using it

• Save one profile per roll — per colour and per brand — up to 20. Press Use this to choose which one is in use, or switch profiles off.
• On the Flat lithophane page, signed in with a profile in use, tick Use my filament profile. It moves the minimum and maximum thickness to your measured range and re-spreads the tones. It is off until you tick it, so a print you were happy with never changes by surprise, and unticking puts your old thickness settings back.

A calibration routine

Something drifting — a new nozzle, a move, a firmware update, a damp roll? Reprint the one test that covers it and update that single reading.

Fault finder

Something wrong with a print? The Fault finder (menu: Tools → Calibration & test prints) lists the common faults by what you can see — stringing, corners lifting, lines up the side, gaps in the top, a clicking extruder. Search for it, or pick a heading.

Each entry says what the fault looks like, what to check in the order worth checking it, what to change, and which test print settles it. Every entry has its own link, so you can send it to someone.

Supporters can also describe the problem in their own words and get an answer back from the AI, pointing at the entries that match. It uses one of the day's AI uses — the same allowance as the AI designer.

Photo to 3D

Photo to 3D (menu: Tools → Designers & generators) makes three things:

• A 3D model from a photo. One clear photo of the object on a plain background works best; add the back and the sides if you have them. Choose STL to print in one colour — it is sized to the longest side you ask for — or 3MF, GLB or OBJ to keep the colour.
• A relief from a picture — a face, a pet or a logo, raised (or cut in): the subject cut out on its own, or the whole photo on a square or round base, like a medallion.
• A model split into parts that print well: a figure with joints, or any object.

A model takes a few minutes; you can leave the page and come back. When it is ready, the preview shows it in 3D beside your photo, and it is kept under My 3D models on your account page to download again. Your photos and models are private to your account.

Anyone can open it and see what a model would take. Making them is part of Supporter Plus, which includes everything in Supporter and 250 credits a month, counted from the day you pay; a job that fails does not count. If they run out before then, a top-up pack adds 140 more, used after your monthly credits, and they do not expire. The page shows what each job uses and what you have left.

Cut-out lithophane

Cut-out lithophane (menu: Lithophane → Cut-out) is a flat lithophane whose edge follows your picture instead of a rectangle. Whatever is transparent in the picture becomes a hole, and so, if you ask, does a colour you pick: click it in the picture, and the tolerance slider decides how close a shade counts. Lit from behind, only the subject glows.

• A transparent PNG works best. Erase the background in the image editor first, or use line art on a plain background.
• Loose pieces are left out, because anything not joined on would fall off. Tiny specks of hole inside the picture are filled back in.
• A solid strip along the bottom lets it stand, and holds the bottom of the picture together.
• Thickness works as on the flat lithophane: dark is thick, light is thin. A cut-out wants a slightly thicker thinnest part (0.8 mm) so its edges are strong.

Anyone can try it and see the previews; making the STL is part of Supporter Plus.

Double lithophane

Double lithophane (menu: Lithophane → Double) is two flat lithophanes back to back with a hollow between them: a picture on each side, the light inside. It is closed along both sides and over the top, and open at the bottom, so it drops over a lamp or sits on a turntable and shows a picture whichever way it faces.

• Two photos, or one. Leave the second slot empty and the first photo is used on both sides.
• The back is mirrored by default, because a panel seen from behind otherwise reads the wrong way round. Turn that off if the back photo is meant to be seen as it is.
• The gap is the space for the light: 5 to 15 mm is plenty. The top bridges the gap as it prints, which is why it is worth keeping small.
• The frame can be raised, like the cube's: the border stands proud of the picture on both faces. Left flush, the same width setting is simply how wide the solid border is.
• Save the job as a project at the bottom of the page, photos and all, and open it again later to print another one.
• It prints standing up, exactly as it comes out of the generator, and needs no supports. The frame down each side, the cap across the top and the solid rim along the bottom edge are what hold the two panels together.

Anyone can try it and see the previews; making the STL is part of Supporter Plus.

Lithophane Collage

Lithophane Collage (menu: Lithophane → Collage) puts up to ten photos together on the exact shape of the lithophane they are for, then opens that generator with the collage and its size already in.

• Pick the shape first. Flat, a curved panel, a cylinder lamp or a lantern of 3 to 6 sides. The collage takes that shape’s real proportions, so nothing is stretched when it becomes a lithophane.
• Arrange the photos. Start from a grid, one big photo, a strip or a scattered look. Drag a photo to move it, drag its corner to resize it, and drag the round handle to turn it (Shift for 15° steps). Double-click a photo to choose which part of it shows in its frame; scroll to zoom. Right-click a photo to turn it a quarter (for a sideways phone photo), straighten it, or bring it to the front or send it back. Add text puts names, a date or a message on it, in dark or light letters, with an outline or a band behind so it reads over a photo.
• Round a lamp, a photo carries on across the join, because the two ends meet. On a lantern the dotted lines show where each side folds; each side goes to the Lantern generator as its own photo.
• See it lit before you commit: busy collages can print muddy. The gap between photos prints as a line — dark gaps thick, light gaps thin.

Anyone can build a collage and see it lit; taking it to a lithophane or downloading it is part of Supporter Plus. Save it as a project to come back to it.

Split into tiles

Split into tiles (menu: Lithophane → Split into tiles) cuts a flat lithophane that is too big for your printer into tiles that fit its bed. On the Flat page, Split into tiles takes the lithophane you have made straight there; any flat lithophane STL can be dropped in as well.

• Make it bigger first if you like: A4, A3, A2, A1 or a longest side. Only the width and height change, so it lights the same; made much bigger, the picture looks softer from close up.
• Pick your printer and it works out the fewest tiles that fit, or choose how many across and down yourself. If it fits whole, you can still download it in one piece at the new size.
• Puzzle joints lock the tiles together and hold them flat while the glue sets. Snug leaves a gap of about one detail step between the pieces; choose Easy if your printer’s parts come out a little fat. Straight edges are there if you would rather just glue.
• Print every tile the same way up, with the same settings and filament, or the tiles will not match when lit. The ZIP has a map: rows A, B, C from the top, columns 1, 2, 3 from the left.
• Lit from behind, the seams show as thin lines. Put them where the picture can take them if you can: a frame, or a plain background.

It works on flat lithophanes only; a cylinder, lamp or globe cannot be split this way. Anyone can see how a lithophane splits; downloading the tiles is part of Supporter Plus.

Puzzle lithophane

Puzzle lithophane (menu: Lithophane → Puzzle) turns a flat lithophane into a jigsaw that lights up when it is done. Press Make a puzzle on the Flat page, or drop in any flat lithophane STL.

• Choose about how many pieces (12 to 200, or across × down) and a size up to A1. Every inside edge gets one knob, in or out; Another cut deals a new set.
• It prints in one go. The pieces are laid out as the finished puzzle with a gap round each (1 mm unless you choose otherwise), so they come off the bed separate. A puzzle bigger than your bed is split onto plates along piece edges.
• Make it sturdy. A lithophane is thin where the picture is light, and a knob there can snap. Set the minimum thickness to 1.2 mm or more on the Flat page, and keep pieces bigger than about 15 mm.

Anyone can see the puzzle; downloading it is part of Supporter Plus.

Product mockups

Product mockups (menu: Tools → Sell your prints → Product mockups) makes listing photos of a lithophane before you have printed it: lit and unlit, in a scene, with your shop name on.

• Bring the lithophane. Best: make it on the Flat or Curved page and press Make mockups. It arrives exactly as you set it up, at its size, and nothing is generated or downloaded to do it. You can also drop in a flat or cut-out lithophane STL (a cut-out keeps its holes), or a plain photo.
• What it is: a flat panel in a frame with a light behind it, on a light-up stand or on its own; a cylinder lamp on a base; or a curved panel. Pick the wood or colour of the frame and base, and the filament colour.
• The shot: a light studio, a dark studio (where the glow shows best), a night-light room or an evening shelf. Lights on, off, or both side by side — the picture buyers want. Choose the light’s colour and brightness, drag to turn the view, or use Front, At an angle, Low and Close-up.
• Your name on it: a shop name or a logo as a watermark in any corner, and an optional caption strip along the bottom.
• Download: one picture at Etsy (2000 × 2000), Instagram (1080 × 1350), Facebook (1200 × 630) or your own size, as JPG or PNG — or a photo set of four in a ZIP: lit at an angle, off and on side by side, a lit close-up, and unlit from the front.

The glow is worked out from the lithophane itself — thin parts shine, thick parts stay dark — so it is a fair picture of the print, but it is still a picture: your filament and lamp decide the real thing. Anyone can make a mockup and look at it; downloading the pictures is part of Supporter Plus. Save it as a project to come back to it.

Print-ready 3MF

Print-ready 3MF (menu: Tools → Change an STL you have → Print-ready 3MF, or the Print-ready 3MF button on any lithophane maker) turns a lithophane STL into a 3MF your slicer opens ready to print: on the bed, the right way up, with the lithophane settings already set.

• Your slicer. Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, Creality Print, Elegoo Slicer and Anycubic Slicer Next share one kind of 3MF; PrusaSlicer has its own. Other slicers, such as Cura, cannot read settings from a 3MF: they get the model, placed and turned, and the page lists the settings to type in.
• Your printer. Pick it, type its size, or choose one of your printer fingerprints, which also sets the nozzle and filament. The page warns when the lithophane does not fit, and suggests turning it or splitting it into tiles.
• On the bed. A flat lithophane stands up by default, on its longer edge: the finest shading, and steadier. Lying flat is quicker and suits cut-outs and very large panels. Lamps, lanterns, cubes and globes stay as they were made, with buttons to tip over an STL that was saved on its side.
• The settings in the file: layer height from your nozzle (0.10 mm on a 0.4 mm nozzle, 0.08 mm on Fine), 4 walls, 100% infill, outer walls at 25 mm/s, the seam on a corner, no supports, and a brim sized to how tall and thin it stands. Each comes with its reason, and you can change any of them.

The settings are put on the lithophane itself, not into a whole profile, so the file opens with the printer and filament you already use and changes nothing else. In Bambu Studio and the slicers like it, open the file with File → Open project; in PrusaSlicer, with File → Import. Click the lithophane in the object list to see its settings.

Temperature, flow and the cooling fan belong to your filament profile, which the 3MF leaves alone; with a fingerprint, the page reminds you of the values you measured. Anyone can load a lithophane and see the plan; downloading the 3MF is part of Supporter Plus.

Paint your STL

Paint your STL (menu: Tools → Change an STL you have → Paint your STL) colours any model for a multi-colour print and gives you a 3MF with the colours already on your filament slots.

• Detail first. The model is split into small triangles (2 mm by default) so the brush can paint fine detail. Choose it before you paint: changing it starts the paint again. Smaller triangles mean a bigger file.
• Filaments. Up to 16 slots, each with a colour and a name. Slot 1 is the model’s own filament; the slots match your AMS or tool order.
• Brush paints what faces you under the cursor. Fill colours a connected area and stops at edges sharper than the angle you set (180° fills the whole part). Whole part paints a whole separate piece of the model with one click. Height band paints everything between two heights, set in millimetres or in layers (for example 5 layers from layer 51), cut exactly at the band's edges: layered signs and text. Undo and redo with the buttons or Ctrl+Z.
• Download for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, Creality Print, Elegoo or Anycubic (their own painting format), PrusaSlicer (its multi-material painting), or any other slicer (standard 3MF colours). In the slicer, set up the filaments in the same order and slice.
• One nozzle, no AMS? When the colours are stacked by height, the page lists the heights to change filament at.

Save it as a project to carry on painting later: the paint is kept with the model. Anyone can load and paint a model; downloading the 3MF is part of Supporter Plus.

Slicer settings (the important bit)

Open the STL in your slicer. These settings make or break a lithophane:

Many slicers include a "Lithophane" profile, but the table above is all you really need.

Orientation on the plate

• Flat photos: print standing up vertically (like a picture frame), image facing front — smoothest tones, no supports.
• Cylinder / Cone / Multi / Globe: print upright as modelled — curved and tapered walls self-support (a cone leans only slightly).
• Cube: print upright (open top and bottom) so all walls form cleanly.
• Add a brim if a tall, thin print wobbles or won't stick.

Lighting & display

• Use a diffuse, even backlight — an LED light box or panel is ideal.
• Cooler/neutral white light shows the most contrast.
• For lamps (cylinder, cube, globe) use a low-heat LED — never a hot/incandescent bulb (PLA softens with heat).
• The hanging hole option turns any flat shape into an ornament or keychain.

Troubleshooting

Quick-start recipe (can't-go-wrong)