Built-in dithering options

[Daniel-Khodabakhsh]

Loving Rayforge, I tested out a few other FOSS laser CAMs and I like this one the most!

Not sure if this is in a roadmap for Rayforge, but it would be cool to have built-in dithering options for raster images.

Currently users have to preprocess raster images in an application like GIMP to create a dithered version of the image. It would be neat if this can be done inside the application directly.

[knipknap]

Good request, thanks! I think this should not be too hard to add. I am currently effectively rewriting all importers, so not a good time to start, but I imagine it would be easy - the architecture allows for it already.

[knipknap]

I am not sure what is the best approach. Probably this dithering only makes sense for the Raster step and not for Depth Engraving. So it could be an option in the Raster step setting. But then it would only be visible in the generated path, not in the image itself.

Another alternative is to dither in the app so that the image is visible. This has another drawback though: If the dithering resolution is not matching up with the raster resolution then it creates sub-optimal results.

Or we could make a third raster-based step type: Engrave (Dither). This is similar to option 1 above.

[knipknap]

Ah, another thing to consider is that after dithering a contour operation would contour every single dot. So this is a major reason to only apply the dithering in the step itself, not on the image. Because otherwise contouring AND raster engraving would be harder, you would have to import the image twice on different layers and align them

[Daniel-Khodabakhsh]

Great idea with step Engrave (Dither), I think this makes sense because I feel that dithering options are orthogonal to the threshold slider and hatching options in Engrave (Raster) settings. If this approach is taken I think the name of the thersholding/hatching operation should be reconsidered because both would be raster operations. Maybe to something like Engrave (Simple) or Engrave (Fill)?

Alternatively, Engrave (Raster) can have 2 modes: Threshold/Hatch and Dither. I prefer the Engrave (Dither) idea though, I feel this might overcomplicate the dialogue

[Daniel-Khodabakhsh]

I think it's fine to not apply the dithering on the image itself, that can stay as-is and continue to be a source for other operations like you mentioned.

Similar to the generated path preview for the other operations, the dithering can appear in the same way, but it would just be many dots