Turning a picture into a carvable 3D relief used to mean one of two things: buy a desktop carving suite for hundreds to thousands of dollars up front, or buy someone else's STL files a few dollars at a time on Etsy. There's a third way now — all-in-one CNC software that runs in your browser, where designing is free and everything else costs less per month than a single Etsy STL file.
| Route | Typical cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop carving suites (Vectric, Carveco class) | Hundreds to thousands up front, or ongoing subscriptions | Powerful, mature — and priced for professionals |
| Buying STL files one at a time (Etsy) | ~$5 per file, forever | Someone else's designs, fixed sizes |
| JACR CNC Studio | Design free · $5.99/month for everything | Unlimited STLs of your own art, G-code, and live CNC control in the browser |
For photo-to-relief work — the thing most hobbyists actually want — yes, and it removes the two biggest barriers: price and learning curve. You also get V-carving, sign making, frames, lithophanes, a full vector CAM workspace with bitmap-to-vector tracing, and a Web Serial GRBL controller, so the design-to-sawdust chain lives in one tab. Professionals with years of desktop-suite muscle memory will still find features unique to those tools; if you're deciding where to start, starting free beats starting at several hundred dollars.
Do I need CAD experience? No — upload, generate, drag sliders. The wizard picks bits and feeds for you.
Will the G-code run on my machine? Exported G-code is single-bit with no tool-change pauses, so it loads cleanly in Easel, UGS, Candle or any GRBL sender — or run it live in-app with guided bit swaps.
Can I sell what I make? Your art, your files, your carvings — that's the point. Many members use it to stock their own shops.
Start Free — Convert Your First Image
Next: Getting Started · The Porcelain Method · Toolpaths & G-Code
