Original image on the left, vectorized on the right
Have you ever had a photo that you wish you could blow up to a much larger size? Doing something like that would require a vector image, which is a graphic format that has no size limitation. You’re in luck because there is a new service in town, called VectorMagic, that will take your regular images and do its best to convert it into a vector graphic. The conversion process is normally rather quick, and it only asks you a few questions such as:
- What type of image are you uploading? Is it a photograph, anti-aliased logo, or a non anti-aliased logo?
- What is the quality of the image? Is it sharp or blurry?
- Are there less than 12 colors in the original image, or are there more than that?
After it’s done you’ll be able to download the vector image in a variety of lossless formats including PNG, SVG, and EPS.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that starting with a higher quality images will result in pretty good conversions. I intentionally made the Firefox logo above low quality to start with so that I could see what the end result would be. The vectorized Firefox logo was a bit choppy, but it almost looks like artwork to me. When I bumped up the quality of the logo the result was much better, but it obviously has a hard time with shading:
Original image on the left, vectorized on the right
Tip: The bigger and more detailed the images are the more time it will take to process. If you just want to play with this real quick try shrinking down some of your images otherwise you might be waiting for a few minutes to see the results.
VectorMagic [via Lifehacker]
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Tags: Web Sites, Hacks, How To, Photos
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Holy bleepity bleep! That stuff is awesome! I uploaded my avatar, let the site process it and then rendered it in The GIMP on 1000×1000 pixels.
Here’s the result:
[img50.imageshack.us]
You should also try scaling it down. Scale down the original image to 75×75, then scale down the vector image. It makes so much difference!
Awesome site like a web app under the hand you gave us here!
Buildings and houses photos vectorized make 3D property developments mountings presentations a breeze to promote future real estates, for instance. I made one for an estate agent, afriend, he wanted to buy the result!
Scaling down works pretty well, too.
Bravo!
Wow, that looks really darn good. I think the Firefox one at the end of the post would have looked that good if there wasn’t so much shading involved. That was the same problem I had when using photos.
I’m surprised the photos vectorized well. When I tried photos the shading was really thrown off, and the image just looked funny. If it’s a computer generated model it might look good though.
Tried to vectorize a 96×96 sized msn avatar… It’s just not working. Knew it was too good to be true
It really just depends on how detailed the image is that you’re trying to vectorize.
Hi, Read with great interest your link for vector converting app. Wondering if anyone knows if standard image editing software (i.e., CS2) can handle graphics that have been vectorized? Does anyone know what extension the graphic has once it has been vectorized?
I did a search on this forum to find this information and don’t see any discussion concerning this.
Thanks in advance for any help.
As we stated in the article the images can be saved as “PNG, SVG, or EPS”. They should be handled fine by most imaging software.