Are you using the pass through option on the layer when you pre-process the artwork?
Figured someone would put a link to Laser Everything video. It covers what most people are clueless about and that is the proper interval for machine and material. A must watch for anyone… along with an excellent description on using dot-width adjust ability on a layer.
It might help to think of the laser more like a printing press, it only does burnt and not burnt… Not exactly true, but the material you use has a usable range for a gray scale, which is very compressed when compared to a photograph with an infinite range in gray scale. On a co2, grayscale option if for 3d type applications.
Even a bmp is limited to 255 shades/steps between burn and not burn… 256 steps is probably exceeding what most materials are capable of… You can probably see that the new 32bit machines using 16bit pwm generation isn’t really buying you anything when it comes to range… so you have 65,536 steps… ?
You can still do some pretty incredible images, although not what I call a photograph.
A good dither is probably the best approach.
@Bulldog does some pretty incredible work… These are done on a fiber, but it’s an example of what can be done… Although a smaller spot, increased resolution, doesn’t change what I’ve said about a gray range.
Good luck
