How It's Made

How It’s Made

Creating these crystals is a wondrous combination of technology and art. Ever wonder how we suspend a 3D image inside a crystal? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Learn how we create a 3D rendering of your image and then suspend it in crystal using a technique called “Sub-Surface Laser Engraving”

The Art

First, your photo needs to be upscaled and converted to 3D. There’s no smoke and mirrors here, we have a design studio with dedicated artists that use proprietary software and techniques that bring your photos to life. These design artists use a combination of software and their own design skills to meticulously enhance your photo into a 3D rendered image. To start, we recommend using the highest quality photos you can. We upscale every photo with an HD upscaling process to get the best results possible. Keep in mind that this software has limits and a photo that is too blurry or dark may not be upscaled properly.

After the HD rendering process an artist takes your enhanced photo and opens the file in the 3D converting software on a computer. This software is very unique and allows the artist to take any regular image and convert it into 3D. The artist then goes over every aspect of the image and individually designs your unique 3D rendering. The result is a high quality 3D image file that is ready for the next step, “Sub-Surface Laser Engraving.” 

The Science

This is where the high tech stuff really begins. We take the final image file and input it into a special machine that uses LASERS to etch the image below the surface of a high quality K9 borosilicate glass. This glass is chosen for its unique properties that make it durable under extreme heat while being very optically clear. 

The machine uses a magnifying glass to focus the laser onto a specific point inside the crystal. Did you ever take a magnifying glass and use the sun’s light to burn a leaf? It works just like that, only using lasers! The heat of the laser creates a CRACK in the crystal, a microscopic imperfection that can be seen with the naked eye. These machines are incredible… They are able to focus over 1,000 points per second to rapidly burn millions of points inside the crystal. This process is called “Sub-Surface Laser Engraving.” This is how the image is made, by stacking millions of microscopic imperfections using plotted points to render something we can recognize. The end result is something truly beautiful and special. The final Pix Crystal product is the highest quality, highest resolution 3D crystal photos produced in about 5 minutes. The entire process from start to finish is incredible, and immortalizes your favorite moments in a way you can cherish a lifetime!