Have been trying to use the path/trace bitmap function on either imported jpeg or svg files and it just hangs up or crashes. I have tried making the files smaller and lowering the resolution, but same problem. The live preview shows an image, but if I select multiple scans, it just hangs up. I have tried this on two different computers. My original files are not that large, ie 2.5MB, and the reduced ones are about 500KB.

What I am wanting to try is to get my images to print well to an epilog laser printer, so that I can use the engraved wood to make woodcut relief prints (printmaking). The normal raster cuts are often not deep enough, even with multiple passes and slower print speeds. I thought if I could print them as a vector file, maybe I could get deeper printing.

Anyone else with experience on making printable woodcuts, do you have other ideas?

I can't speak to the woodcutting questions. How long do you wait, when you try the trace? Even on a powerful computer, it would take some time to trace a 2.5 mb image. 2.5 is fairly large for Trace Bitmap, actually. 500 kb should be do-able, but still could take a minute or so, depending on your computer.

When you say it hangs, are you sure that nothing has happened? Often when an image is black on white, the result looks so much like the original, and it's right on top of it, users don't realize they got any results.

You're welcome to share the file, if you like. Then we could test. Also please share the settings you used for Trace Bitmap dialog.