Hi Suzanne,

Your project reminded me of a software that I saw at an exhibition long ago which I thought was pretty cool, the software converts photographs into height maps according to the shades in the photograph then the file can be output to a 3d printer to be printed, it doesn't look like much at first but when you backlight the piece that's when the magic happens, here's an example on the software companies site http://www.ransen.com/phototomesh/Lithophane-STL-Files.htm

They're called Lithophanes, apparently it's an old art that used to hand carved in porcelain.

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