Cat Photo Carving

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Good Morning everyone, did my 1st Photo-Vcarve yesterday turned out ok, however I'm a bit stuck. I'm trying to do this I've converted it to a black and white photo but still carves poorly what am i doing wrong? Photo of my cat Molly

 

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do I have to do something with the photo? Make it black and white

anything to increase the contrast will help, but its only 200 pixels tall so not enough resolution to carve

if you carve it 8 inches tall that's only 25 pixels per inch resolution

if you zoom in on it you can see that there is not enough detail (click to expand)

 

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here's a rough sketch, but that's more suitable for v-carving, I'm not sure how it would photo carve