8/9/2004 10:35:23 AM|||Mike|||Autotracing is a kind of a nifty idea - it takes a regular bitmap picture file, and traces the edges to make a vector picture file.

A bitmap is a description of exactly, pixel by pixel, of a picture. A vector graphic, on the other hand, describes the shapes.

Most graphics files that you encounter are bitmaps. Bitmaps tend to be quick to display - the computer doesn't really have to build an image, the files says, for each point in the image, "this color". For a vector graphic, though, the computer has to draw it out, which is often slow. Vector graphics are just about useless for photographic images. On the other hand, when you blow up a bitmap, you just get bigger dots, but in a vector image you get longer lines and curves. When you edit a bitmap, all you can really do is change the colors of pixels - you can erase or paint over areas of the image, but you can't really move things, or take them out, or resize them. For example, if you add some text to a bitmap, whatever the text covers is gone forever. If you add some text to a vector drawing, and later decide to move it or erase it, the stuff under it is still there.

Another consideration: vector image software isn't as common as bitmap. For example, there is no widely used standard for vector graphics on the web. GIF and JPG and PNG are everywhere, but those are bitmap formats.

Anyway, this page can trace a bitmap image and return a vector version. Fun for making patterns. And maybe for art purposes.

Have fun - the hard part is finding an output format that you have a viewer for.

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