Check out this amazing online vector tracing app. it's pretty much the bees knees in tracing...

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

Glenn

That's amazing the difference between what it can do and what other tracers do. And it lets you download the vector version as an SVG - sweet. I will definitely be making use of that site.

Yes, and the vectors are clean, not busy and full of points.
I'd love to have this as a stand alone app.
Glenn

I found that the traces it produces are about just as good as inkscapes trace features. I tried to have it trace the LA Galaxy logo, it came out ok. If only they could convert different vector formats to others (i.e. eps to svg)

capnhud wrote:I found that the traces it produces are about just as good as inkscapes trace features.

I was going to argue this point when you first posted it, but it does all depend on what you are tracing. For some things the difference will be negligible, but other it really shines.

Check out this comparison:

VectorMagic did an outstanding job of tracing the Armored Bone Dude that not even Illustrator CS3 came close to matching despite me spending significant amount of time tweaking values.

Note how VectorMagic preserved detail such as the how the orange colouring doesn't quite touch the character. It had no difficulty at all maintaining the correct colours. With Illustrator I had to tell it to select 150 colours and then increase the minimum area of the object sizes to prevent it from going overboard with detail. Illustrator took a lot of fiddling and it was unable to detect lines and create smooth paths for them.

I found that Inkscape could not compete with either VectorMagic or Illustrator for a drawing like this. The only way to control the number of colours was to increase the number of scans which in turn created an overly detailed image. As a result the ability to correctly match colours was pretty poor and the result isn't very vector-like. But I would be interested to see if someone could produce a better result with Inkscape - perhaps I didn't use the best settings.

Im impressed with both VectorMagic and Inkscape here

Inkscape reproduced the texture more genuinely. Maybe it can match the VectorMagic one with a bigger threshold.

I probably didn't provide very good comparisons - purely because it's difficult to compare settings. You might think that Illustrator is worse than Inkscape from that comparison I provided, but it's not. Illustrator looks worse because I was pushing it to produce something close to what Vector Magic produced in terms of colour stepping and simplfied shapes. I found Inkscape couldn't produce large stepping in colours whilst maintaining colour accuracy. Inkscape also couldn't create large, well-formed shapes and instead created a blur of shapes. Illustrator came off uglier only because I was able to push it further than Inkscape.

Sadly, Vector Magic is now a commercial product. I can appreciate that they need to make money, though.

I tend to think their pricing is a little expensive at $3.50 per tracing but at the same time it's not like I trace a lot of stuff and Inkscape will be fine for 90% of stuff I would like to trace. Hopefully the desktop version will be better value for money.

You can save a vectorised image as a PNG for free and since VectorMagic has done all the work in reducing colours and defining shapes I dare say you could use Inkscapes trace bitmap to convert it flawlessly into a true vector.

Some good news is that Inkscape is first vector application listed on the Vector Magic resource page.

Vector Magic wrote:Inkscape is an open source vector editor that uses SVG as its native format. It can read and write SVG flawlessly and can export EPS. The user interface is not as polished as some other solutions, but once learned, Inkscape is a very powerful tool. It is also totally free and actively developed, so we recommend it highly.