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Advanced Mode

The Full-Control Image Editor for Laser Engraving

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1. Introduction

What Is the Advanced Mode?

The Advanced Mode is ImagR's full-featured image editor. Unlike One Click – which applies automatic presets for specific materials – the Advanced Mode gives you complete, unrestricted control over every single image manipulation step.

Think of it this way: One Click is the autopilot. The Advanced Mode is the cockpit. You decide exactly what happens to your image, in what order, and with what settings.

Who Is This For?

The Advanced Mode is built for users who want to go beyond presets. If you engrave on unusual materials, need a very specific look, or simply want pixel-level control over your results – this is where you work.

There are no material presets here. No "Wood" button, no "Glass" button. Instead, you get over 100 image processing tools and the ability to chain them into custom workflows that you can save, reuse, and share.

You don't need to be a Photoshop expert. The interface is designed to be approachable – but the depth is there when you need it.

The Big Idea: Build Once, Reuse Forever

Here's the single most important concept in the Advanced Mode: Every adjustment you make is recorded as a step in a workflow. Once you're happy with the result, you save that workflow. The next time you have a similar image, you load the workflow, and every step is applied automatically – in the exact same order, with the exact same settings.

No manual work. Consistent results every time.

2. The Editor Interface

The Menu Bar

Along the top, you'll find the main menu organized into categories:

  • Adjust – Everything related to light, color, and detail. Brightness, contrast, curves, saturation, hue, vibrance, and more.
  • Filter – Blur, sharpen, noise, edge detection, and all the dithering algorithms you'll need for laser engraving.
  • Stylize – Creative effects like bloom, vignette, halftone, comic, sketch, and color grading LUTs.
  • Image – Geometry operations: crop, resize, rotate, flip, skew, warp, perspective correction, and adding text or borders.
  • ImagR – ImagR-specific tools: AI background removal, AI upscaling, vectorization, contour extraction, QR codes, and the workflow system.

Each category has subcategories, so you can drill down quickly. For example, Filter → Threshold & Dither gives you access to 12 different dithering algorithms.

The Canvas

The center of the editor is your canvas. Zoom in and out with the scroll wheel and pan by clicking and dragging. On touch devices, pinch-to-zoom and swipe gestures work as expected.

The Command Palette

Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K on Windows) to open the Command Palette. This is the fastest way to find any tool. Just start typing – it searches across all plugin names and keywords.

Plugin Dialogs

When you activate a tool, its dialog panel opens on the right side of the editor. Most tools give you real-time preview – you see the effect on your image instantly as you drag sliders. Click Apply when you're happy. Click Cancel to discard – nothing is changed.

3. Light & Tone Adjustments

Getting the tonal range right is the foundation of a good engrave. Too flat and you lose detail. Too contrasty and you blow out highlights or crush shadows.

  • Brightness / Contrast / Exposure – The basics. Quick global adjustments when the image is simply too dark or too bright.
  • Highlights / Shadows – Independent control over bright and dark areas. Recover blown-out skies or lift crushed shadows without affecting the rest.
  • Curves / Tone Curve – Precise tonal shaping. S-curves, shadow lifts, and highlight rolls in a simplified interface.
  • Auto Refine – Local contrast enhancement. Reveals detail in both dark and bright areas simultaneously – a secret weapon for engraving.
  • Dehaze – Cuts through atmospheric haze and fog. Restores contrast and color in outdoor photos.
  • Auto Contrast / Auto Levels / Histogram Stretch – One-click automatic corrections. Useful as a starting point.

For laser engraving, CLAHE followed by a slight contrast boost is often the best starting point. It maximizes the tonal information that the dithering algorithm can work with.

4. Color Adjustments

Since most laser engravers work in grayscale or pure black and white, color adjustments are about shaping the image before you convert it.

  • Grayscale – Pure, mathematically correct conversion. One click, no options. Uses Rec. 709 luminance weights.
  • Monochrome – Photographic black and white with midtone lift, highlight preservation, and film contrast. Produces richer results than simple grayscale.
  • Channel Mixer – Full manual control over how each RGB channel contributes to the final image. Boost the red channel for skin tones, or blue for skies.
  • HSL / Saturation / Vibrance – Adjust hue, saturation, and lightness. Shape colors before conversion to get the tonal separation you want.
  • Temperature / Tint – White balance correction. Fix color casts that would affect the grayscale conversion.

5. Detail & Sharpening

Detail tools control the fine texture and edge definition of your image:

  • Clarity – Enhances local contrast in midtones. Makes textures pop and adds a three-dimensional feel.
  • Texture – Enhances or reduces fine surface detail. Increase for fabric and wood grain, decrease for smooth skin.
  • Sharpen / Unsharp Mask – Edge sharpening. Unsharp Mask gives you radius, amount, and threshold control for professional results.

6. Dithering & Threshold

This is the heart of laser engraving image preparation. Dithering converts a grayscale image into pure black and white dots that simulate gray tones. The Advanced Mode offers 12 dithering algorithms:

  • Floyd–Steinberg – The classic. Balanced error diffusion. Great all-round choice.
  • Atkinson – The original Apple Macintosh dither. More contrast, less smooth, a characteristic retro look. Popular for engraving.
  • Jarvis–Judice–Ninke / Stucki – Larger diffusion matrices. Smoother gradients but slightly softer.
  • Bayer 4×4 / Bayer 8×8 – Ordered dithering with a visible grid pattern. Structured, mechanical look – great for retro aesthetics.
  • Blue Noise – Organic, patternless dithering. Looks like hand-drawn stippling. No visible grid or directional artifacts.
  • Sierra / Burkes / Sierra Lite – Variations on error diffusion with different speed and quality tradeoffs.

You also get Threshold (hard black/white cutoff with no dithering) and Adaptive Threshold (locally adapts to uneven lighting – ideal for scanned documents and engravings with text).

There is no single "best" dithering algorithm. The best one depends on your material, your laser, and the image. The Advanced Mode lets you try all of them, see the result in real time, and decide for yourself.

7. Geometry & Sizing

Before you engrave, you need the image at the right size and orientation:

  • Resize – Set exact dimensions in pixels, inches, or millimeters. Set DPI for your laser.
  • Crop – Freeform or with aspect ratio presets. Shape masks (circle, star, heart) are also available.
  • Rotate / Flip – Straighten images or mirror them. Flipping is essential when your laser requires a mirrored input.
  • Perspective / Skew – Correct converging lines in architecture photos or intentionally add perspective distortion.

8. Filters & Effects

Beyond the essentials, the Advanced Mode includes a full suite of creative and utility filters:

  • Blur tools – Gaussian, Box, Motion, Radial, and Surface Blur. Surface Blur is especially useful: it smooths surfaces while preserving edges.
  • Edge Detection – Sobel, Canny, and Outline. Produce line-art versions of photos for engraving or cutting paths.
  • Morphology – Erode and Dilate operations. Thicken or thin lines in black and white images after dithering.
  • Invert – Flip black and white. Some materials engrave dark-on-light, others light-on-dark. One click to switch.
  • Film Grain / Noise – Add texture for artistic effects or to break up banding in gradients.

9. ImagR Tools

These are tools unique to ImagR that go beyond traditional image editing:

  • AI Background Removal – Automatically removes the background and creates a transparent cutout. Powered by AI.
  • AI Upscale – Enlarge images 2×, 4×, 8×, or 16× with real detail generation. Actual AI super-resolution, not simple interpolation.
  • Vectorize – Convert raster images to scalable SVG vectors. Auto-traces color regions.
  • Contour Extraction – Extracts outlines as vector paths for laser cutting or vinyl cutting.
  • DPI Test – Analyze and test DPI resolution for printing or laser engraving. See exactly what your output will look like at a given DPI.
  • QR Code Generator – Create custom QR codes with custom shapes, colors, and gradients – ready for engraving.

10. Workflows: Build Once, Reuse Forever

This is the feature that makes the Advanced Mode a productivity tool, not just an editor.

Building a Workflow

Every time you apply a tool, it gets added as a step in your current workflow. Open Show Current Workflow from the ImagR menu to see all steps in order with their exact parameters. You can reorder steps by dragging, disable individual steps, or adjust parameters on any step without starting over.

Saving a Workflow

When you're happy with your result, go to ImagR → Save Workflow. This exports all your editing steps as a compact JSON file – every tool, every parameter, every setting. Your complete recipe.

Give your workflows descriptive names, for example: "anodized-aluminum-photo-engrave.json" or "oak-wood-portrait-dither.json". You'll thank yourself later.

Loading and Reusing a Workflow

Open a new image, go to ImagR → Load Workflow, and select your saved JSON file. Every step is applied automatically, in order, with the exact same settings. Your image is processed in seconds.

  • No more repeating the same 6 steps manually for every image.
  • Consistent results across hundreds of images.
  • Share workflows with colleagues or customers – it's just a file.
  • Build a library of workflows for different materials, styles, and use cases.

Build a personal library of workflows. One for dark wood portraits, one for glass engraving, one for anodized aluminum, one for leather. Every material and style gets its own recipe. Over time, this library becomes your most valuable asset.

11. Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Let's build a complete workflow from scratch. Our goal: prepare a portrait photo for laser engraving on dark wood.

1

Enhance Tonal Range

Open Adjust → CLAHE. This reveals hidden detail in shadows and highlights. Adjust the clip limit until you see good detail across the image. Apply. Then open Adjust → Contrast and give the image a slight boost to compensate for the flattening. Apply.

2

Convert to Black and White

Open Adjust → Monochrome. This gives you a richer B&W conversion than simple grayscale. Adjust the midtone lift and contrast to taste. Apply.

3

Invert (If Needed)

Open Filter → Invert. On dark materials, you typically need to invert the image so that the laser burns where the image is white. Apply.

4

Resize

Open Image → Resize. Set the width to match your engraving area – for example, 100 mm at 300 DPI. Lock the aspect ratio so the height adjusts automatically. Click Apply. Resize always comes right before dithering – this way the dither pattern is generated at the exact output resolution.

5

Dither

Open Filter → Floyd–Steinberg Dither. Watch the preview – the photo is now converted into pure black-and-white dots that simulate gray tones. This is always the very last editing step – dithering after resize ensures the dot pattern matches your output resolution pixel for pixel. Apply.

6

Save the Workflow

Open ImagR → Save Workflow. Download the JSON file. Name it something like "dark-wood-portrait.json". Done – the next time you need to prepare a portrait for dark wood, load this workflow and it takes seconds instead of minutes.

12. Tips & Best Practices

Order Matters

The sequence of your steps affects the result. As a general guideline for laser engraving:

  1. Tonal corrections first – brightness, contrast, CLAHE, dehaze.
  2. Color-to-grayscale conversion – once tones are right.
  3. Invert if your material requires it.
  4. Resize second to last – set the final output dimensions right before dithering so the dot pattern is generated at the exact target resolution.
  5. Dither last – always the final step before export.

Dithering should always be the last processing step. Any modification after dithering – resizing, blurring, contrast changes – will destroy the dither pattern and introduce gray values again.

Use Undo Liberally

Every step can be undone with Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z). Don't be afraid to experiment. Try a setting, undo it, try something else. The preview mode also lets you see the effect before committing.

DPI Test Before Engraving

Use the DPI Test tool to simulate what your image will look like at a specific DPI on your laser. This can save you material and time by catching issues before you burn.

AI Upscale for Low-Resolution Sources

If your source image is too small, use AI Upscale before doing anything else. It generates real detail – not just blurry interpolation. Upscale first, then proceed with your workflow.

Export Settings

When you're done, export your image via File → Export. For laser engraving, PNG is usually the best format – lossless, no compression artifacts. Set the DPI to match your laser's requirements.