I was trying a free carving software called F-engrave and also watched a few videos. Seems very useful, very basic but it does carving and engraving.
You can load BMP and DXF files to carve.
I have tried ESTlcam and that is a good piece of software.
The F-engrave also does v-carve and clearing of the inside area of the carve. Hopefully somebody else here has more experience with the software and can confirm if I should continue. Maybe post a picture of your carve.
I have not tried to cut any generated G-code yet, watching the videos it seems to work.