In the Laser → Engrave image … menu you choose a photo or logo (PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, BMP). It appears in the middle of the material, at first at most 100 mm long. You change size and position as with any shape. Transparent areas count as white, only dark areas burn.
For the first image the app creates the laser profile Photo (values like "Engraving", plus dither and 2 mm overscan).
Raster types
In the Laser profiles dialog you choose under Image engraving:
- Dither (default): dots on or off (Floyd-Steinberg), shades of gray come from the density of dots. Best choice for photos and most diode lasers.
- Atkinson, Jarvis, Stucki: more dither types. Atkinson is high-contrast and keeps highlights clean (logos, bright photos), Jarvis and Stucki spread the error further for softer gradients (portraits).
- Pattern: even dot pattern (Bayer 4×4) without noise, like newsprint.
- Grayscale: power follows the gray value in 16 steps. Good on wood once you have tuned the values with a test grid.
- Black and white: only dark areas burn, at full power. Good for line art and logos.
Brightness, contrast and gamma act before rasterising. An image that is too light burns little; more contrast brings out shadows and highlights. Gamma only shifts the midtones: above 1 they get lighter (wood burns too dark there quickly, 1.5 to 2 often fits), below 1 darker. Black and white stay.
Raster preview
In the Laser profiles window, an image's profile shows below the controls how the laser will burn it: every dot as the raster type sets it. The preview follows every change at once. For large images it calculates more coarsely and says so; lasering always uses the set line spacing.
Line spacing and duration
The profile's line spacing (0.1 mm is usual) sets fineness and duration. Halve it and the engraving takes twice as long. A large photo at full material size easily takes over an hour; the duration is shown in the Laser tab.
The overscan lets the laser keep moving past the line end with the beam off, so acceleration and braking stay out of the image and the edges stay clean.
Lines are run back and forth and trimmed to the dark parts at the edges, without stopping between runs.