With all my respect I must say that conversion of photorealistic images without gradient fills support cannot produce something deserving more than "exit without saving". Visit www.smartfills.com, where I placed at gallery some results of raster to vector to raster conversion. If someone name me tool, what can do it with the better quality, I'm ready to eat my hat. Andrew, Kamchatka

You'll hardly need another tool after having tried this great service: http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ Really impressive quality!

I've used a few trials of these programs and they work with varying success. For Mechanical, Civil, Architectural drawings, you'll need to pay a good premium for the higher end software and even then, you'll still be spending quite some time cleaning them up, moving objects to new layers, fixing text, etc. I was lucky to find Capacity Plus at www.capacity-plus.com. Very fast and reasonably priced if you've got several drawings that need to be converted to CAD. Good company!

The new version of corel draw works extremly well and there is a trial version avaliable. It is easy to use and you have a lot of options to change your raster image so that you get a better traced result.

RaveGrid v 2.5, is a new raster to vector software for images that is fully automated and rapidly provides high quality vector images in SVG and EPS formats. The URL to download a free evaluation version (not fully loaded with functionalities)is: http://www.lanl.gov/software/RaveGrid/ S ome documentation is also available for download at this site. As an example comparison with existing software, RaveGrid is faster than Vector Eye at conversions and can handle larger and more complex (textured, noisy) images than Vector Eye can. For example, Vector Eye terminates on certain images which are highly textured or noisy, because there are too many paths for it to handle.

I agree with Mike (below). I've used their services too and the quality is outstanding. No auto tracing program will ever give you such results. Steve Reynolds, Capitol Signs You should mention evectorize.com in this list. Steve Reynolds, Capitol Signs

Here is a new open source program specifically supposed to help illustrators and animators convert sketches: http://linetracer.sf.net

I am using this raster to vector conversion tool - http://www.raster-vector.com it is useful.

In the past I have used a company that offers hand vectorizing services called www.evectorize.com . I think you should include it in your list. The quality of manual vectorization is by far more superior to any auto-tracing s/w. Thanks, Mike Bruller Smart Signs

Would be really helpful if you could categorise according to price and whether a trial download is available.

This information is great, however, what I need to do is take a an old photo of a vehicle and convert it to a scale drawing. To make it more complicated the vehicle photo was taken from an angle. I do, however, know the dimensions of the vehicle. Any ideas on how to do this would be VERY gratefully appreicated. Thanks, Kevin

The fully functional 30-uses trial of MagicTracer can be downloaded at http://www.magictracer.com

MagicTracer is a auto-tracing utility that isn't already on the list.

At the last update, we did a search looking for more tools (we do have about two or three more to add that we have) -- we didn't find any other tools that do bitmap to vector conversions. Please share the names of the products so we can look into it. Thanks!

The list needs updating. There is more out there. Some big ones were missed.

The URL http://www.clublime.com/tracetute/tracetute.htm is dead. It is the Illustrator Tracing tutorial.

Likely you will find those within advanced pro software tools like Adobe After Effects and similar ones. I am not yet too familiar with them, so this is all I could advise for now.

Are there any packages that will convert a video clip (avi/mov) to vector and even better, to outline?

I want to convert allRaster images into vector formats.Please let me know the best way of doing it. Suhas

I'm new to convetion, and I just need a program to convert bitmap to vector that's easy and free (Saving for PSP) But when ever I search I find some half-assed program that isn't practical and or reguires a regiment of understanding. I don't have time for it, so if possible, point me in the direction I want go or at least give me a honest instruction that's understandible

Thanks for a truly excellent list of bitmap to vector resources. Converting bitmap to vector has always been a major headache for me. Thank you for making this available to the general public. Kudos.

we are a service bureau offering all CAD drafting and GIS services from INDIA. We are a 5 year old company with over 100 clients in the US and EU region. please feel free to contact us for a no-obligation price quote. Thanks!

I am trying to find a Programme that will Convert Pictures (JPEG ??) Such as Tractors,Aeroplanes,Firearms and Cars etc to linme Drawings Could somebody point me in the Right Direction as to any Progamme that might accomplish this

Thank you for compiling such an awesome list!!

I am a bit confused with all of the options on your web site. Perhaps you can point me in the right direction. I am looking for a program that will convert pdf and tiff files into dxf files. I do drafting in a cad based program and dxf is the file format that I work in. Does one on your programs have this ability, and if so how much does it cost and what is your delivery time. Thank you for your help.......Terry

I have used another product called HiJaak for a few years. It is now owned by IMSI and will convert just about any graphics format to just about any graphics format. Older versions had their own tracing feature built-in, but newer versions have used a Corel product instead.

Top of the line auto trace program Imagaro Z www.procutplus.com shown at Macworld and BIG shows.

Do you want to convert DWG/DXF files to JPG, JPEG, TIF, TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG, WMF and EMF? I suggest you to using Easy DWG/DXF to Image Converter. Easy DWG/DXF to Image Converter is a batch DWG/DXF converter tool that converts DWG/DXF files to BMP, JPG, JPEG, TIF, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EMF and WMF images without the need of AutoCAD. For more information, please visit http://easydwg.com

> you forgot great free black-white vectorization program http://potrace.sourceforge.net for linux/win/anything thanks for that tip - exactly what i was looking for.

you forgot great free black-white vectorization program http://potrace.sourceforge.net for linux/win/anything