Learn the craft
Short, practical guides - every one ends with a tool that does the work for you.
Start here
Convert a photo to a laser-ready file
The complete pipeline - tone, contrast, dithering, DPI, material and export. Start here if you're new.
12 min readBest dithering settings, explained
Floyd–Steinberg vs Jarvis vs Stucki vs halftone - which dots survive on which material, and at what DPI.
guideLightBurn image settings explained
Every image-mode option decoded - and when to use Pass-Through so you don't dither twice.
guideBy material
Photos on wood
Best woods, grain, prep and starting settings for diode and CO2.
guidePhotos on metal
Anodized aluminum, stainless and marking spray - what each machine can actually do.
guidePhotos on acrylic
Cast vs extruded, back-engraving and edge-lit LED portraits.
guidePhotos on leather
Veg-tan vs chrome-tan safety, and low-power settings that mark not cut.
guideNorton White Tile method
Photo-quality engraving on a $2 tile with any diode laser - paint, burn, rinse.
guidePhotos on slate
Why slate flips your image, which dithering to use, and the settings to start from.
7 min read