Tracing Programs

[Nebi]

I've been out of the loop for a while, but I was wondering which applications have a trace function? That is, it attempts to convert raster line art into vector art. I wanted to start a discussion about this if possible, and I hope it has not already been touched upon. :|

I was hoping we could gather comments from creators who have used the trace function in the applications themselves for comparison.

In another topic someone mentioned 'Corel Tracer' I believe. I'm pretty sure Adobe has something in one of their applications...

Update: 13 Mar 08

1) Corel Tracer
2) Vector Magic
3) Illustrator
4) Mangastudio
5) Adobe Flash
6) Inkscape
7) Delineate

[mugenjohncel]

- CONTENT NO LONGER RELEVANT -

[Ren]

[Link] Is this somehow related to what you were asking?

Damn, 4Gigs?Where the hell did you find a beast like that?*_*
Was it assembled by yourself by any chance?

[PyTom]

4 gigs of ram is like $200 nowadays. If you're seriously using your computer for ram-intensive work, that's not a lot to spend.

[Ren]

Yes but when I took my PC(one year ago though) to get some more RAM they told me they couldn't put more than 2 because XP couldn't recognise more than that.Today I was reading a post on a forum about someone who wasn't able to install his 4 Gigs of RAM by his pc which only recognised 3 of them.Some people in there suggested that he needed XP 64Hrz if he wanted to use all 4...

Also, I used to never have problems with my RAM until I had to change my video card when it exploded...ahem.They didn't have the one I used so they gave me a GEForce 8500 GT which should be a little more powerful, but now games that used to run smoothly are lagging like crazy(S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example)

I should also point out hat I'm extremely ignorant about Computers, that's why I may sound totally stupid when I get so surprised about things that may be normal to anyone else.

Edit:I had a Ge Force 6600 when S.T.A.L.K.E.R. used to run smoothly, and before that an Ati x300 which was on the PC when I bought it.

[yummy]

Well, your problem is not about RAM there, Ren. It's more about the video card GPU. Despite being a brand new model, your Geforce 8500 GT is a little less powerful than a nVIDIA GeForce 7900 or an ATI Radeon X1850.
Your card was more designed for viewing videos in H264 for example.
However, it's still a good compromise between performance and price since it has overall good performances at a relatively low price.

edit: A GPU is the common name for Graphics Processor Unit... That is to say, I wonder where I ever mentionned anything about graphic card RAM... (Plus it was about a game heavily using 3D, but anyway I was going well off topic so I don't think it'd do any good just reposting about this).

[Hyperguy]

Yes but when I took my PC(one year ago though) to get some more RAM they told me they couldn't put more than 2 because XP couldn't recognise more than that.Today I was reading a post on a forum about someone who wasn't able to install his 4 Gigs of RAM by his pc which only recognised 3 of them.Some people in there suggested that he needed XP 64Hrz if he wanted to use all 4...

The order that you install the ram modules can affect that also, though most operating systems nowadays will recognize that amount. The motherboard is the most influential factor as far as recognizable amount is concerned. Each motherboard has a max amount of ram it can recognize. XP 64-bit is for 64-bit processors and shouldn't be a grand factor as far as max memory is concerned since 32-bit version of XP also receives updates that extends the max amount of memory the operating system can recognize.

Also, I used to never have problems with my RAM until I had to change my video card when it exploded...ahem.They didn't have the one I used so they gave me a GEForce 8500 GT which should be a little more powerful, but now games that used to run smoothly are lagging like crazy(S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for example)

What was your old one? The GEForce 8500 GT has a 128-bit memory interface. If your old one had a 256-bit interface then you'd definitely notice a difference in performance. O_o

Edit: GeForce 6600 eh? It's pretty similar to the 8500, though the 6600 has a little more memory bandwidth. I'm not sure if that's enough to cause the lagging(it's a difference of 12.8 gb/sec to 14.4 gb/sec memory bandwidth speeds), but it's something to consider.

I should also point out hat I'm extremely ignorant about Computers, that's why I may sound totally stupid when I get so surprised about things that may be normal to anyone else.

Most people don't know what a GEForce 8500 GT is. Consider yourself more informed than the general public.

[monele]

I know some clients at work who had problems getting all their 4Gb being recognized. I don't remember how/if they solved it though ^^;... (but I think there was something about XP and Vista dealing with it differently).

[Nebi]

The motherboard is the most influential factor as far as recognizable amount is concerned.

Totally agree. Going on the internet or asking about the maximum supported memory, the type, and the configuration will lead to less problems when it comes to memory installation. I recall that some boards can only take memory sticks of equal value and inserted in pairs. Things like that...

...but get back on topic, people! >:| *shakes fist*

[Mikan]

Well, your problem is not about RAM there, Ren. It's more about the video card GPU.

::facepalm::

no, graphical RAM has nothing to do with 2D imaging.

Maybe if said user was using Maya or 3DMAX intensively it'd matter, but for 2D applications (photoshop, painter, illustrator etc) all that really matters is 1. processor 2. ram 3. hard drive space.

The only times where your graphics card really matters is 1. when using an application that deals heavily with rendering things in 3D 2. when watching a video with a high frame rate or unusually large dimensions

I know some clients at work who had problems getting all their 4Gb being recognized. I don't remember how/if they solved it though ^^;... (but I think there was something about XP and Vista dealing with it differently).

32bit operating systems have trouble with more than 3GB of RAM.
But it's not going all to waste... for some computers, anyway.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

[ciel]

Adobe used to have streamline but they stopped updating that. I think it just got absorbed into adobe illustrator. Illustrator's pretty good for vector works and I think you can use the live trace feature for this though

[Ren]

Actually, I think you can use Mangastudio to turn your scanned linearts into vectors, I'm not sure it's in both versions or only in the pro one though.

[Nebi]

Thank you for the contributions. Thus far we have:

1) Corel Tracer
2) Vector Magic
3) Illustrator
4) Mangastudio
5) Adobe Flash

I just remembered that Flash also has a trace bitmap feature.

[yummy]

There's also this website that lets you vectorize your images without installing stuff on your box.

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/

It nearly does the same thing as macromedia flash when you vectorize an image. But that might be quite different from what you're actually searching for (even if you mentionned flash earlier).

[sake-bento]

For the record, Vector Magic is possibly one of the best things that's ever happened to me. I used it to make my terrible lineart look a little bit cleaner for Ripples. If I actually draw NICE lineart, Vector Magic makes it look especially good.