List of Softwares/Tools I found in the internet which may be helpful in illustrations and graphics designs. 1. Boris Red 2. Canvas 11 3. GentleDraw 4. Hijaak Pro Graphic File Conversion Software 5. Imagaro Z 6. Vector Magic 7. Adobe Illustrator Live Trace Tool 8. Able Vector 9. Algolab Raster to Vector Conversion Toolkit 10. AlgoLab Photo Vector 11. Auto Trace 12. Silhouette 13. Synthetik Software Studio Artist 3.5 14. TraceLine 15. Xaos Tools : Segmation 16. Trix TracTrix Raster to Vector Conversion 17. InkScape 18. LineTracer 19. Logo Spruce 20. Magic Tracer 21. Macromedia Freehand MX Tracing Tool 22. Panopticum Vectorizer 23. PoTrace 24. Project 5 Photocut Processor 25. Raster to Vector Software 26. Real Draw Pro 27. Vector Eye 28. Vextractor 29. Visual Mask 30. WinTopo Raster to Vector Converter Freeware 31. Raster to Vector 7.0 32. Scan2Cad 33. TraceIT: free bitmap tracer for LD2000 and FB3 34. Vector Graphics ActiveX 35. WinTopo Raster to Vector Converter Pro 36. Acme TraceArt 37. Easy Trace Hope this could help you..
you forgot 3 Big dogs in Vector illustration design: Adobe Illustrator Corel CorelDraw Serif DrawPlus Looks like the majority of the ones you posted are converters. The sad reality of converters is that while they do convert a raster image to a scalable vector graphic, you lose a portion of quality & ALL edit ability. By Edit ability I refer to the fact that the conversion process turns the small pixels / polygons into individual micro vectors. Because of this there are NO real layers for true lines / paths vector editing, just millions of micro vector dots. Even print companies ask for the master LAYERED files (If any) to be accompanied with a print project so that they can do the needed Editing & color conversions to CMYK Prior to vectorization for the press. Even with images a print company may want the original Raster so that they can clean it up first (E.G. red eye, crop, brightness, contrast, etc...) for a better end result. I can see this working out for an image that will never need to be edited as a vector. However, it's not practical for actual company / corporate usage when it comes to graphics that need to adapt & change with the times in order to continually compete with a shifting market in the business world. Note to all the designers that are reading this: Please don't get the idea from the conversion list that if a client requests vector formats, that it's ok to deliver a converted graphic that's no longer editable. When a client requests a vector format 99.9% of the time they expect to be able to access & edit LAYERS if needed. With that in mind, remember that as a designer in an already saturated market, your reputation is always on the line & it can make you or break you. All it takes is a few bad calls & disregards for clients needs to give you & or your company a bad name that everyone starts to avoid. Nice list though
Well said. Quick money is a quick way for losing a customer I've multiple clients asking me to fix something - let's keep to vector conversion here - that should have been done properly by the original "designer" in the first place. But apparently they failed - either by the lack of professional knowledge/ability, or by trying to cheat a customer with 20-second auto-tracing while charging for the quality manual work at $XX/hour.
I totally agree with you. Once it has happened with me too. The client wanted to change the background scenery(which he had previously requested me but after completion he changed his mind) with some other background he had with him. So its always advisable to deliver the editable layered format.