That Old Vector Magic
Converting a bitmap image, such as a scanned logo, into vector format is one of those classic tasks that few designers relish. Should you painstakingly recreate it from scratch? This will take time, as well as the mastery of Bézier drawing tools, but will result in an accurate, clean rendition. Or should you run it through the auto-trace program supplied by Corel, Adobe Systems and other developers? This will be fast but may resut in inaccuracies that require tedious cleanup. A free new online tracing service provided by the Vector Magic site may simplify this decision in the future.
The site is the outcome of a Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda, who are apparently considering creating a desktop application based on their tracing algorithms. All power to them, since their approach would seem to totally fry that of Corel and Adobe, judging from the many samples posted on the site.
Tracing images on Vector Magic is simplicity itself. Just upload your JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP or TIFF file and answer a few questions about the nature of the image. Then let the magic take place and subsequently either go through the cycle again to tune the results, or download the vector file. Beyond my gratitude for providing this free service, I'm left wondering how the top graphics application developers have allowed themselves to be so completely left in the dust by these two guys. Quick, somebody hire them!
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