I have purchased and prepped the photo in gimp. What material and settings would you guys recommend for the best quality print?
That would depend greatly on what you want to make. This photo would work well with painted tile.
You already have an active thread on this, please don’t post duplicate threads with the same question.
sorry i thought posting in beyond the manual would not be duplicating and get other peoples attention.
Presuming this is already prepped, you’re going to want to make it greyscale and up the contrast if you’re going to engrave it. It should look too harsh to the eye when it’s right for the laser. There’s a great thread on here going through the entire process for photoshop - but you call follow along in GIMP you just need to find the equivalent commands.
Once you’re there, the convert to dots or convert to patterns under SD Graphic does a fabulous job on images!
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We see new posts no matter where you post them. I don’t think anybody ever only browses just one section of the forum. 
Best practice therefore is to post where the subject matter best fits the section topic, not just where you think the most people will see it.
Also, personally, the reason I didn’t respond to your first post is that it’s just 'way too wide open. We don’t know your end use or what effect you want to achieve, and there are an infinite number of materials in the world; narrowing them down requires knowing a little bit about those first two things. Not to mention that although it’s a beautiful photo in color, I’m not sure it’s really going to be nearly as breathtaking in grayscale, so I can’t even figure out why you want to engrave it to begin with. 
Here’s a quick grayscale render–it’s glorious in color, but in grayscale it goes from a breathtaking scene to basically just a photo of a stick with some birds behind it. 
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main reason I suggested painted tile, grey scale meh…
Original photo
this is how it looked just fresh out of the forge. to be sealed after
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“it’s glorious in color”
In my opinion, that’s likely why you haven’t gotten much feedback.
This image uses color more than contrast. That doesn’t translate onto wood unless you really push the curves, and the result rarely does justice to the original.
I’d want that image printed on canvas. Engraved on wood, meh…
(oh… and fix the tilting horizon! 
)
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