Today I put a short video on TikTok and YouTube (and a couple of other social media sites) comparing two papercuts. I asked, “Hand-Cut or Laser-Cut”? This is the design from a previous post, where I got ChatGPT/DALL-E to help me design a Valentine heart. I then cut it two different ways; by hand and by laser.
Here is a closer look at the two pieces. Can you tell which is which?:
(Before anyone mentions it – I realise I accidentally cut off the little heart above the doves’ heads in version 2. Oops!)
So…the one on the left is the hand-cut version:
…and here is the same section done by laser:
There is one easy way to tell them apart, without even having to look at detailed closeups. The stand-out difference is that the rightmost one is a tiny bit brown, due to smoke in the lasercutting machine. To successfully create a papercut with a laser machine, you quite often have to turn off the ‘air assist’. I might do a separate post one day on why, but the relevance here is that the smoke isn’t blown away as efficiently, so the paper goes a bit toasted.
The other main difference is usually only visible at closer range. It’s that the cutting is a bit more jagged or lumpy in some places. Having said that though, (1) it took me less than an hour to cut this one out by hand, so that explains why some parts aren’t as finished as they could be, (2) there’s nothing to stop me going back and tidying up the sharper angles if I need to.
At very close range it becomes even more obvious which is which. Lasercutting machines work by burning the paper away. So if you see (or smell!) a laser-cut piece of paper it will almost always have toasted edges. They often look like the edges of the cuts are slightly serrated, too, depending on the laser’s settings.
Compare the laser version above with the handmade version below. The image below doesn’t have the singed brown outlines on the shapes:
Which version is ‘better’?
I honestly can’t decide, because they both serve different purposes. If I want to do some relaxing, therapeutic papercutting as a hobby, then hand cutting is the way to go. But if I want to turn the artwork into a Valentine card, lasercutting is the best way to do that, otherwise I’d have to charge about £20 per card, which most people aren’t willing to pay. The laser gives me the ability to reproduce papercut artworks (in the same way that painters create prints of their works to put onto cards). So if someone wants one of my designs they can either go for the affordable version or the premium handmade version.
If you’d like to cut this design for yourself, I’ve adapted and created it as an SVG in my shop and Etsy shop.
