BurnBadger
Free · no sign-up

Free AI image upscaler for laser engraving

Make small or blurry pictures 2× or 4× bigger and sharp enough to burn. Remove the background if you only want the subject.

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

Drop a picture here

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

How to upscale a picture for laser engraving

  1. 1

    Drop in your picture

    A photo, a logo, clip art: whatever you want to burn. Small or blurry pictures gain the most.

  2. 2

    Pick 2× or 4×

    Choose Photo for photos and Art for logos, cartoons and line art. Remove the background if you only want the subject.

  3. 3

    Upscale

    The AI redraws the picture at the bigger size, sharpening edges instead of just stretching pixels. Drag the slider to compare.

  4. 4

    Check the laser preview

    A quick black-and-white look at the dots your laser will make. Nudge brightness and contrast to see what changes.

  5. 5

    Download and burn

    Download the PNG and open it in BurnBadger (or your laser software). Burn a small test on scrap first.

New to engraving photos? The BurnBadger guide covers materials, power and speed, and photos.

Questions

Is it really free?Yes. No sign-up, no watermark, no limit on how many pictures. It runs on your own computer or phone, so it costs us nothing per picture.
Is my picture uploaded anywhere?No. The upscaling, background removal and laser preview all run inside your browser. The only downloads are the AI files themselves (once; your browser keeps them), and your picture never leaves your device.
Why upscale before laser engraving?A laser burns about 10 lines per millimetre (254 DPI). A 600-pixel picture covers only about 2.4 inches at that density; burned bigger, every pixel becomes a visible block. Upscaling 4× gives enough detail for about 9.5 inches, with smooth edges.
2× or 4×?4× for small pictures (under about 1000 pixels across) and for anything you’ll burn big. 2× when your picture is already fairly large. The page shows how many inches each result covers.
Photo or Art?Photo is for real photos: faces, pets, places. Art is for logos, cartoons, clip art and line drawings; it keeps flat colours flat and edges crisp.
Which dithering should I use?Stucki for most photos (it’s BurnBadger’s default), Atkinson for brighter, crisper photos, Threshold for logos and text. Slate and black tile mark light, so turn on Invert.
It says “processor”, and it’s slow.Your browser has no WebGPU, so the AI runs on the processor instead of the graphics card. Recent Chrome, Edge and Safari use the graphics card and are much faster. Big photos can take a few minutes on a processor.

Burn it with BurnBadger: free download

BurnBadger is push-button laser engraving for GRBL diode lasers: pick a picture, pick your material, frame it and burn. Free for Windows and Mac. Pro ($59 once, every device) burns photos, with background removal and laser-ready cleanup built in.

Get it for WindowsGet it for Mac

Credits: upscaling by Real-ESRGAN (Xintao Wang et al., BSD-3-Clause; models realesr-general-x4v3 and RealESRGAN_x4plus_anime_6B). Background removal by IS-Net / DIS (Xuebin Qin et al., Apache-2.0). Runs on ONNX Runtime Web (MIT). AI results can contain mistakes; check before you burn.