How To Improve This?

I tried this old photo of my mother, small print, 72dpi, resampled to 11.5" and 200 dpi and lasered at 400 dpi. The material is named China Black Marble. It's from China but it ain't no marble...maybe Basalt or even a composition. Anyhoo, it's HARD! With my 35W Epilog I started at 34 Speed and 100 power. Ran each one at least 4 times, making adjustments each time. I'm sure improving the photo would help the quality, but I'm at a dead end with my skimpy photo processing abilities. The one I ran through Photograv is pretty obvious, the other one is cleaner but appears washed out. Any suggestions?Attachment 206309Attachment 206308

Ray I am looking at the image and cannot help but feel that you have overstretched the possibilities of the original image. There are a lot of artefacts in the both of the images. I will send you a private message regarding it.

Ray - your private message box is now full, I cannot reply to your last message and I will leave you a message on Facebook - in the mean time, go and weed out your SMC emails.

That's probably the same granite that lasersketch calls"marble" With a 35 watt epilog, after converting to a 2 bit black and white image (you can't put a gray scale on this stuff), etch at 300 dpi, 100%power, 75% speed, sharp focus, One pass.. Then then wash off the granite dust, let dry, and whiten the image with Wintons Titanium white oil paint. Let sit for a few days for the paint to dry, then seal with a good stone sealer..