Two of origianal photos very old and faded. Picture of DIL recent photo, much better resolution. I spent much time playing with Adjust setting. Not unlike playing musical chairs; I do not have an eye for color.
I see you’re dithering, which is a great approach for these.
A couple of things to try… Let’s get the dark, darker… 
If you dissolve some baking soda into water and spray your wood first, then let it dry, the engraving usually comes out a lot darker. It’ll be less likely to warp if you spray both sides.
Because dithering dots are full-on or full-off and because human eyes are not, you have to pull the dark side down, and reduce the contrast a little, to get the middle ranges back.
Hover over the image, right click and select ‘Adjust Image’.
If you’d like to share a project file of one of your photos, I’ll elaborate more.
This was a similar image with similar contrast.
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I am listening and will try adjusting as you suggest. I will be posting results along with copies of original photos. Meanwhile my sister has decided we should try doing a Mandala. Here is as far as I can get…I will be starting a separate post on this project when I get done with my engraving. I appreciate sooooo much your help.
The Mandalas are most often stacked layers that are only slightly different.
If you’re willing to share a publicly available file you can post it here for review, support and coaching.
If you (or your sister) paid someone for the LightBurn file or the vector art, send it to me directly and I won’t use it or distribute it (or get you in trouble).
I downloaded this free file from the Internet. Do I cut each flower on a separate layer and on a new board? I know nothing about stacking or how that works.
If you put each flower on a different layer then you can ( or have to ) copy and adjust your settings and turn layers on and off. It’s probably the most reliable way to do this. It’s a cut - not a fill.
If it’s a tested file, it should behave as expected. You can check each flower in the Preview window to make sure all the cuts make sense.
If you have your colors picked out for your project, you can pick layers that have a similar color as a reminder of which color you’re going to produce.
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This helps, many thanks.