Hi Wangine,
If your objective is to laser reproduce photographic images then, currently, the 57CNC and Auggie would be your best choice. As Art has said, you need to join the Gearheads forum and read all the 57CNC and Auggie set-up instructions but it is not too complicated to get everything up and working.
I used the DB25 connector from my 57CNC v1.2 and all signals are at the 5 Volt TTL level making it very simple to connect to my existing (LPT parallel port) stepper driver circuitry. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I manually control my maximum laser output power level and then let the software PWM vary the actual output between 0 and 100% of the level I have set. This system works well for me but experimentation is encouraged because there will always be alternative and better ways to achieve more superior results.
Tweakie.