BurnBadger
Free · unlimited

Free laser photo prep

Turn any photo into a laser-ready picture for your material: crop it, size it, pick wood, slate, tile or leather, and see every dot before you burn.

🔒 Runs in your browser. Your photo never leaves your device.

Drop a photo here

JPG, PNG or WebP · HEIC in Safari. Your photo stays on this computer: it’s never uploaded.

BurnBadger Pro · $59 once

From photo to finished burn, in one app

This page makes the picture. BurnBadger burns it: pick your laser and material, frame it and press Burn, over USB or Wi-Fi. The app is free; Pro unlocks photos.

Coming to Pro next:

Batch: many photos at onceSaved settingsLightBurn project file
Buy Pro for Windows · $59Buy Pro for Mac · $59Compare free and Pro

How to prepare a photo for laser engraving

  1. 1

    Drop in a photo

    Faces, pets and places work best with a clear subject and good light. Remove the background if you only want the subject.

  2. 2

    Crop and size it

    Pick a shape (square, circle for coasters, or your own), then type the width in mm or inches. Set the line density to match your laser.

  3. 3

    Pick the material

    Each material starts with its own tone, dots and negative or mirror setting. Slate, anodized metal, glass and acrylic mark light, so those burn as a negative.

  4. 4

    Fine-tune and compare

    Nudge brightness, contrast, midtones and sharpening. Drag the divider to compare the photo with the dots your laser will burn.

  5. 5

    Download and burn

    The PNG keeps its size and DPI. Burn a small corner on scrap first, with the power and speed shown for your laser.

Small or blurry photo? Enlarge it first with the free AI upscaler. For power and speed by material, see diode laser settings.

Materials

Light woodLight wood shows the most detail. Wood darkens around each dot, so the midtones are lifted a little.
Dark woodBurns show less on dark wood, so the picture gets more contrast and brighter shadows. Pick a photo with a bright subject.
SlateSlate marks light grey, so the picture burns as a negative. Each dot spreads on slate: 254 DPI is plenty.
Black anodized aluminumThe laser strips the black dye to bare silver, so the picture burns as a negative. Metal keeps fine dots crisp.
LeatherLeather darkens easily. Start low on power and check a small corner first. Leatherette (PU) needs far less power than real leather.
Clear acrylic, back-engravedThe picture is mirrored, because you burn the back and look through the front. A blue diode laser goes straight through clear acrylic: paint or tape the back first. Shown on a dark backing.
GlassGlass frosts white, so the picture burns as a negative. A diode laser needs a coat of paint or marker on the glass to mark it. Atkinson leaves open highlights, which helps stop chipping.
CorkCork is grainy and darkens very easily, so the picture gets strong contrast, bright midtones and bigger dots.
White ceramic tileSpray a glazed white tile with a light coat of white paint rich in titanium dioxide. The laser fuses it into a dark mark in the glaze; wash the rest off with lacquer thinner. Tile shows very fine detail, so it gets high contrast and about 318–350 DPI. Wear a mask and ventilate: the paint dust isn’t good to breathe.

Each material’s settings are a starting point, not yet proven on a test photo burn. Burn a small corner on scrap first.

Questions

Is it really free?Yes: no watermark, no daily limit and no charge. Try everything without an account; to download, sign in free with Google or a code we email you. Everything runs on your own computer or phone, so it costs us nothing per photo. BurnBadger Pro is what we sell: the app that burns photos on your laser.
Is my photo uploaded anywhere?No. Cropping, background removal and the dots are all made inside your browser. Your photo never leaves your device. Signing in sends us only your email.
What is laser dithering?A diode laser burns a dot or doesn’t, so a photo’s grays have to become patterns of dots. Dithering spreads the dots so that, from a step back, they read as smooth shades. Stucki and Jarvis give smooth photos; Atkinson keeps highlights clean; Threshold is for logos and text.
What DPI should I use for laser engraving?254 DPI (0.1 mm lines, 10 lines per mm) suits most photos on wood and leather. Tile and anodized metal hold finer detail, around 318 to 350 DPI. Materials where the dots spread, like slate and cork, look better coarser. Match the file’s DPI to your laser software’s line interval.
Why does slate burn as a negative?Slate, black anodized aluminum, glass and back-painted acrylic turn lighter where the laser hits. A normal photo would come out like a film negative, so the page inverts it for you.
How do I engrave a photo on a white tile?Coat a glazed white ceramic tile with a light, even layer of white paint rich in titanium dioxide, let it dry, and burn. The laser fuses the coating into the glaze as a dark mark; afterwards, wash off the rest with lacquer thinner or acetone. Pick “White ceramic tile” here for high contrast and fine dots. Ventilate and wear a mask.
Why is my photo muddy or all black in LightBurn?LightBurn is dithering the already-dithered picture again. Set the layer’s image mode to Pass-Through and keep the DPI the file opens with.
Which lasers does this work with?Any laser that burns a picture: the PNG opens in BurnBadger, LightBurn, LaserGRBL, xTool Creative Space and others. The power and speed shown come from our test burns and the makers’ manuals for the Artilume T1 and A4 and the ACMER S2.

Background removal by IS-Net / DIS (Xuebin Qin et al., Apache-2.0), on ONNX Runtime Web (MIT). Dithering: Floyd–Steinberg, Jarvis–Judice–Ninke, Stucki and Atkinson error diffusion. AI results can contain mistakes; check before you burn.