Laser Vector & Raster Prep

The laser can only do "burn / don't burn" at each pixel (or a narrow PWM-driven grayscale on diode/CO2); turning a photo or logo into a clean engrave is a dithering, halftone, or trace-to-vector problem. LightBurn and LaserGRBL include built-in image engines, but heavy artwork prep is usually better done in Design Raster Editors, Design Vector Apps, or Design Image Optimization first.

Built-in image engines

• ★ LightBurn image mode — built into LightBurn; 6+ dither modes (Jarvis, Stucki, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, ordered, threshold, Newsprint, halftone). Pass-through, gamma, contrast, brightness, sharpen — all live-previewed against your machine's beam profile.
• ★ LaserGRBL image engine — built in; vector-to-raster, stretch/dither/halftone, line-by-line and dot-mode. Surprisingly capable; the de-facto FOSS image-engrave path.
• Meerk40t image ops — built in; dither (Floyd-Steinberg), threshold, raster wizard. Strong on K40-class machines.
• xTool Creative Space image tool — built in; consumer-friendly, very limited compared to LightBurn.

Dedicated dither / halftone tools

• ★ ImageR (and its forks) — free; dedicated laser raster prep app. Multiple dithers, level adjustment, contour extraction, presets per material.
• Didder — open source (MIT, Go); CLI image ditherer with 12+ algorithms (Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, Bayer, Burkes, Stucki, Sierra, Jarvis-Judice-Ninke). Scriptable; great for batch workflows.
• Dither It! — free web tool; quick dither preview, Bayer/Floyd-Steinberg/Atkinson.
• Halftone-Cat / halftonepro.com — free web; halftone (dot-pattern) generators for stencil/screen-printing-style engraves.
• GIMP — open source (GPL); Filters → Distorts → Newsprint and Image → Mode → Indexed (with dither) produce excellent laser-ready output. Free and full-featured.
• Photopea — free, browser; Photoshop-compatible UI; good for quick masking + level work before sending to LightBurn.

Vector tracing (raster → vector)

• ★ Inkscape Trace Bitmap (Potrace) — open source (GPL); the FOSS standard for converting line art / logos to vectors before engraving as a vector path. (See Design Vector Apps.)
• Vector Magic — closed source, paid; sometimes better than Potrace on photos-to-vector. Used grudgingly.
• Adobe Illustrator Image Trace — closed, paid; the commercial standard.
• Autotrace — open source; Potrace alternative; CLI-friendly.

Photo-specific engrave prep

• ★ PhotoGrav — closed source, paid (~$395, classic); pre-LightBurn photo engraver still beloved by some plaque / wood-photo shops. Material presets keyed to wood, marble, leatherette.
• PicEngrave Pro 5/6 — closed source, paid; very powerful for photo-on-wood; pre-dates LightBurn's image mode.
• Engraver Master — free vendor app (Atomstack); image prep + send for Atomstack diodes.
• AI photo enhancers — Topaz Photo AI, Upscayl (open source, MIT) — pre-process low-res photos to give the engrave more to work with.

Halftone / artistic styling

• Halftone Generator (Photopea / Photoshop) — circular halftones for that "comic-book" or "screen-print" engrave look.
• Inkscape's Newsprint extension + Halftone effect — FOSS halftone for SVG flow.
• CMYK halftones for color-fill engrave — separate channels, engrave each, color-fill — niche but striking.

Material-specific test patterns

• LightBurn Material Test Generator — built in; produces a power × speed grid for any material.
• LaserGRBL Material Test — built in; same idea, GRBL-flavored.
• Norton White Tile method (community) — engrave on Norton white tiles with TiO2 → produces extremely high-contrast photo engraves on diode lasers; image prep tooling is normal LightBurn/LaserGRBL with extra contrast.

Pick this if…

• Default workflow, you own LightBurn: LightBurn image mode.
• FOSS diode laser, photo engraving: LaserGRBL image engine (or GIMP Newsprint → LightBurn).
• Batch / scripted dithering: Didder CLI.
• Logo / line art → vector: Inkscape Trace Bitmap.
• Old-school plaque / wood-photo shop: PhotoGrav or PicEngrave Pro.
• Need pixel-level control before laser: GIMP or Photopea.