How to Make and Print a Great Lithophane

A lithophane lives or dies on three things: the photo you feed it, the thickness range you choose, and how carefully the plastic is laid down.

Updated 20 October 2026 · 7 min read

A lithophane is a thin panel whose thickness varies with the brightness of an image. Thin areas let more light through and read as highlights; thick areas block light and read as shadows. Held against a lamp, the panel shows the photo in surprising detail. Because the effect depends on fractions of a millimetre, small decisions about the image and print settings show clearly in the result.

1. Choosing the right photo

Not every good photograph makes a good lithophane. The process turns brightness into thickness, so it rewards images with clear tonal separation and punishes images that rely on colour to tell objects apart.

• Strong subject, simple background. A face against a plain wall or blurred background works far better than a group standing in front of a busy street. Clutter turns into texture that competes with the subject.
• Good contrast, but not crushed. You want deep shadows and bright highlights, yet still detail in both. Pure black areas print at maximum thickness and look like solid blocks; blown-out white areas print at minimum thickness and look empty.
• Colour does not survive. A red shirt against green leaves may be obvious in colour but almost identical in greyscale. Convert to black and white first and judge the image that way.
• Resolution matters less than you think. A 100 mm wide lithophane printed with a 0.4 mm nozzle cannot resolve much more than a few hundred pixels across. A sharp, well-lit phone photo is more than enough; a blurry high-resolution image is not.

Faces and portraits

Faces are the most common subject and the easiest to get wrong. Side lighting that adds shape in a normal photo can leave half the face as a thick, dark slab. Soft, even front lighting usually gives the most flattering result. Crop so the face fills a good part of the frame: a face that is 20 mm wide on the final panel will lose the eyes and mouth to the nozzle size. Make sure the eyes are in focus and not lost in shadow.

Preparing the image

1. Crop to the final aspect ratio before generating the model, so you decide what is cut off rather than the tool.
2. Convert to greyscale and check the histogram. Spread the tones so the darkest important detail is near black and the brightest is near white.
3. Lift the shadows slightly. Lithophanes tend to look darker and more contrasty than the source image, so a modest increase in shadow brightness often helps.
4. Avoid heavy sharpening. Sharpening halos become ridges in the plastic and look like outlines when backlit.

2. Thickness settings

Two numbers control almost everything: minimum thickness (the brightest pixels) and maximum thickness (the darkest pixels). The lithophane maker lets you set both, along with the panel size.

Going below about 0.6 mm risks gaps where walls do not fully close, which show up as bright pinholes. Going above about 3.2 mm in typical white PLA gives little extra shadow because almost no light gets through anyway. If your filament is unusually translucent or opaque, shift both values together rather than changing only one.

Always make sure the image is inverted for lithophane use: dark pixels must become thick. Dedicated lithophane tools do this automatically; a generic image to STL conversion may not, so check the preview before printing.

3. Flat or curved?

Flat panels are the simplest to print and fit standard picture frames and light boxes. Their weak point is stability: a tall, thin panel printed upright can wobble near the top. A wider border or a brim solves most of this.

Curved panels stand on their own, are much stiffer during printing, and look good on a desk with a small light behind them. The curve also spreads light more evenly from a single point source. The trade-off is slight distortion at the edges and the fact that they do not fit flat frames. Cylindrical lithophanes for lamp shades take this further and need a light source in the middle. Curved generation is part of the Pro tools if you need it; flat panels cover most uses.

4. FDM print settings

The settings below are a reliable starting point for a 0.4 mm nozzle and PLA.

Orientation: print upright

Stand the panel vertically, with the bottom edge on the bed. In this orientation the thickness changes happen in the X/Y plane, where printer motion is very fine, instead of being stacked as layers. Printed flat, every change in thickness becomes a visible step equal to the layer height, which shows as contour lines across the image. Upright printing avoids that and is the standard approach for FDM lithophanes.

Core settings

• Infill: 100%. Anything less leaves internal patterns that show clearly when backlit. With 100% infill, or enough wall loops to fill the whole thickness, the panel is uniformly solid.
• Layer height: 0.1–0.12 mm. Thinner layers reduce horizontal banding. 0.2 mm works but the lines are visible up close.
• Speed: 20–40 mm/s for outer walls. Slow, consistent extrusion prevents gaps and blobs.
• Nozzle: 0.4 mm is fine for panels 100 mm and wider. A 0.25 mm nozzle resolves finer detail on small panels, at the cost of a much longer print.
• Brim: 5–10 mm. A tall thin part has a small footprint; a brim keeps it planted.
• Seam: aligned or rear, placed on the border edge rather than through the image.
• Cooling: full fan after the first layers, to keep thin features crisp.

Filament

Use plain white PLA. Matte, silk, and pigment-heavy whites behave differently: some are too opaque for good highlights, others too translucent for good shadows. Cheap natural-white PLA is often excellent. Avoid glitter or marble effects, which add noise.

5. Resin lithophanes

MSLA printers can produce very fine lithophanes because the XY resolution is set by the screen pixels rather than a nozzle. A few things change compared with FDM:

• Use white or light grey resin. Clear resin barely changes in brightness with thickness; dark grey is too opaque.
• Thickness ranges are usually thinner than for PLA, because many white resins are more opaque. Print a small test strip with stepped thicknesses to find your range.
• Angle the panel and support it from the border, not the image area, so support marks do not land in the picture. Avoid printing flat on the plate, which creates large suction forces and visible layer steps.
• Post-curing yellows some resins. Cure just enough to harden the part; overcuring can tint highlights.

Resin panels are also smaller on most printers, so plan the crop for the build area. The resin calculator helps estimate how much material a batch will need.

6. Lighting and display

The light source changes the result as much as the print does.

• Colour temperature: warm white (around 2700–3000 K) gives a classic, soft look; neutral white shows more accurate tones. Cold blue-white light often looks harsh.
• Even illumination: a single bare LED close behind the panel creates a hot spot. Use a diffuser, an LED strip around a frame edge bounced off a white back panel, or move the light further back.
• Distance: a light box with 2–5 cm between the source and the panel usually gives even results. Experiment before fixing anything permanently.

7. Common problems and fixes

Before printing a large panel, open the file in the STL viewer and rotate it under side lighting. Faces with blocked-up shadows or empty highlights are easier to spot there than after a four-hour print. Then print a small version, 50–60 mm wide, to confirm your filament and thickness range before committing to the full size.