jim: i think there's software that allows a scanned photo to be "transformed" into woodcut effects ,as well as other effects that might make your results look better when tracing this way. i use a program called "photograve" in conjunction with my laser when doing photos on wood. it allows for some interesting "artistic type effects" when doing portraits. i never tried to send the output to a printer. this software was around $300 bucks. not justified unless you plan on turning out a lot of this type work. perhaps someone else on the forum knows of a program that's good for what you're doing.