I swear I don't work for Vector Magic - I just love how well their tech works despite the fact that I don't think I would ever use it enought to justify a purchase (especially for $295).

Anyway, Vector Magic now has a desktop version and their demonstration video features Inkscape - http://vectormagic.com/desktop
You can simply drag and drop your image from Vector Magic DE to the Inkscape window--neat!

no linux version :p

I have tried the Vector Magic app and it does work really well. That $295. price point is a little out of whack in my opinion though... For another $100. someone could purchase Corel Graphics Suite or Adobe Illustrator, both which have an equally good streamlining/trace function and alot more (particularly in Corels case)

Inkscape can get close to the same functionality as well with some patience and trial & error....It is also sure to improve over time. What i'm trying to say is I just don't understand who their target audience is. I do wish them all the best

Whilst there are a number of tracers, VM really is more capable, produces more accurate colours and defines paths much more intelligently than the competition. There really isn't a tracer as good as this one, and they obviously know that. Having said that, the other tracers are more than acceptable for most users needs and I really can't imagine who would need to trace so many images as to justify the price.

I see that this post got no further followup. Interesting enough I found one of my favorite services through these very useful mention some time ago.

In a spirit of collaboration and knowledge spread I can report that Vector Magic has become even more powerful if that is possible though. Yes they still don't have a linux version which is a bummer but all of their services can be done via their web interface. No I'm not related to them either if you are wondering.

In addition found a nice review of Vector Magic at http://vectorguru.org/software/vector-magic-review.html that you might also like to check. Quite an extensive round-up of their services with some examples and some free goodies. Yey!

Hi pls tell me how can it be (maybe the inkscape users know also) that when i reduce the colors with gimp to 50 colors and then vectorize the image with vector magic it has over 300 colors? i dont understand. where does he get the colors from when there are only 50?

any idea?

Doesn't Vector Magic have a support forum? What about manual?

If it's anything like Inkscape's Trace Bitmap (vectorizes raster images) there's an option to set how many colors you want. I've never seen VM, so I have no idea how it works. But maybe there's an option to set how many colors you want?

Or you could use Inkscape to do it (Path menu > Trace Bitmap). Or there are other trace engines around. All the ones I know about have options to set how many colors.

where does he get the colors from when there are only 50?

It's very clever painter -- reads between the lines (that was joking)

> NOISE <
If you already have so many colors, most likely you have some noise on that image as well
and what might appear as a solid color to your eye, is a whole palette for VM