LASER STARTING POINT

Engraving & cutting library

Laser

Material

Operation

MATERIAL PREVIEW

See what the engraving may look like

A visual approximation using your selected material and current image settings.

EXPECTED LOOK

Actual marks vary with focus, coating, grain, and machine settings. Always run a small test tile first.

WORKSHOP NOTES

Tips for cleaner engravings

Use these as starting points, then confirm the result with a small test tile on your exact material.

DPI is the amount of detail packed into the engraving. Higher DPI means closer scan lines and usually a darker, more detailed result.

Use smaller DPI (wider line interval) for rough or resinous wood, leather, cardboard, or large images. It engraves faster and helps reduce scorching.

A practical starting range is about 250–318 DPI for many diode photo engravings. The selected line interval is your real LightBurn spacing.

Grayscale: Best for smooth shading and portraits when your laser can vary power. Dark pixels burn more; light pixels burn less.

Black & white: Turns every pixel into an on/off mark. It gives a crisp graphic look and is useful when power modulation is limited.

Dithering: Uses black and white dots to imitate gray tones. Floyd–Steinberg is a crisp general choice. Ordered gives a repeating grid; Halftone clusters dots for a print-style texture.

Jarvis (JJN): Spreads error over two following rows for smooth transitions. Try it for portraits, skies and gently shaded photos; it can soften tiny details.

Stucki: Similar to Jarvis, with different diffusion weights. Often a useful compromise between smooth shading and sharpness. Test both on the actual material.

Atkinson: Keeps less of the tone error, creating a punchier, more graphic image. Use for illustrations and bold portraits; it sacrifices some subtle shades.

Sierra: Another wide error-diffusion pattern that balances shading and texture. A useful alternative when the other photo modes do not suit your material.

Sketch / edge drawing: Finds the edges in a photo and turns them into black lines. Lower Edge detail for a clean drawing; raise it for finer texture. It is still a raster PNG, not a single-line vector.

Vector outlines (SVG): Makes editable, closed paths around dark areas. Ideal for clear logos and silhouettes, not full photo shading. Threshold chooses the dark areas; Trace detail controls small marks and simplification. Set an SVG width in millimeters before export.

For an already-dithered or sketch PNG, choose Pass-Through in LightBurn to avoid dithering again, and check its physical size and scan spacing. For SVG, use Fill to reproduce dark regions or Line to engrave their boundaries. Vector outlines are not a safe cutting plan.

Start with a well-lit, sharp photo. Increase contrast until the subject separates from the background, then adjust brightness so highlights are not washed out.

Threshold controls the balance of black and white: lower values create more white; higher values create more black. In Vector outlines, it also controls which dark areas become shapes.

Do not solve every problem with more power. Fix focus, image contrast, speed, and line interval first.

Material color, grain, coating, focus, air assist, and lens condition all change the result. A test tile saves material and makes your final settings repeatable.

• Keep the focus height consistent.
• Test a small crop with the same mode and line interval.
• Ventilate well and never leave the laser unattended.