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Khora Image prints '3D art' from your 2D pictures

Khora Image prints '3D art' from your 2D pictures

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khora image
khora image

A new project called Khora Image aims to let you craft "3D art" from any 2D picture or photo. The digital fabrication technique, which Khora calls "subtractive printing," carves any image onto a recycled board in a variety of textured patterns. Customers can choose the color, whether they want their image to be etched in dots or stripes, and at how fine a resolution — lower-definition images can produce abstract results, though of course there's an trade-off in fidelity.

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Khora sent The Verge a sample image of our logo, and the results are pretty good. The effect is difficult to capture in photographs; although the image is essentially two-dimensional, there's an added depth that appears to shift depending on where you view it from. The reproduction wasn't perfect, however — the CNC drill failed to accurately render the kerning between the "T" and "H" in our wordmark.

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Khora tells us this is down to a "variance of the texture," and that they could have chosen a more appropriate combination for our logo. Customers should be able to preview their image using Khora's software before it's fabricated, which should help to avoid any similar glitches. We were unable to test this for ourselves, however; the software is still in beta.

The Khora project has just launched on Kickstarter, with the lowest tier that gets you an image priced at $79. Delivery is in December, though the team will have to meet a funding goal of $30,000 first.