The following tables contain general and technical information about publicly available raster-to-vector conversion software.
Creator | Year released | Year last updated | List price (USD) | License | Supported OS (without emulation) | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CorelDRAW | Cascade Parent Limited d.b.a Alludo Formerly called the Corel Corporation | 1989 | 2023 (version 24.3) | $449, $169 upgrade | Proprietary | Windows |
Easy Trace | InterVek LLC (Russian : ООО ИнтерВек) d.b.a. Easy Trace Group (Russian : Группа Easy Trace) | ? | 2023 (version 12.4) [1] | €960, €480 upgrade (Easy Trace Pro) Versions 7.99 and 8.65 are free (Easy Trace) | Proprietary | Windows |
Adobe Illustrator | Adobe Inc. Formerly called Adobe Systems Inc. | 1985 | 2023 (version 27.8.1) | $19.99 per month | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
PhotoLine | Computerinsel GmbH | 1996 | 2023 (version 24.01) | $86, $42 upgrade | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
Graphic Tracer Professional | Steve Boek Graphic Powers AB | 2016 | 2023 (version 12:2) | $15 per month or $120 per year | Proprietary | Windows |
Inkscape (uses Potrace) | Inkscape.org | 2003 | 2023 (version 1.3) | Free | GPL-2.0-or-later | Windows, macOS, Linux |
ImageTracer | András Jankovics | 2015 | 2020 (version 1.2.6) | Free | Public domain (Unlicense) | Cross-platform (platforms that can run JavaScript or Java) |
Potrace | Peter Selinger | 2001 | 2019 (version 1.16) | Free | GPL-2.0-or-later | Cross-platform, Windows and POSIX |
Scan2CAD | Avia Systems | 1997 | 2022 (version 10.4.13) | $49–$149 per month | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
WinTopo Freeware | SoftSoft Ltd. | 1999 | 2015 (version 1.76) | Freeware Free to use for any purpose, including commercial purposes [2] | Proprietary | Windows |
WinTopo Pro | SoftSoft Ltd. | 2000 | 2015 (version 3.6) | $299 | Proprietary | Windows |
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer | Xara Group Ltd. | 1994 | 2023 (version 23.4) | $89.99 | Proprietary | Windows |
Super Vectorizer | Effectmatrix Ltd. | 2013 | 2016 (version 1.6.6) | $29.99 | Proprietary | macOS |
AutoTrace | Martin Weber | 1998 | 2024 (version 0.31.10) | Free | GPL-2.0-or-later | Cross-platform, POSIX (mainly Unix-like) |
VTracer | Tsang Hao Fung | 2020 | 2022 (version 0.5.0) | Free | MIT | Cross-platform (command-line version) Browsers with WebAssembly support (web version) |
SVGcode (uses Potrace) | Thomas Steiner | 2021 | 2023 (version ?) | Free | GPL-2.0-or-later | Android, web (PWA), Windows |
Primitive | Michael Fogleman | Free | MIT | MAC OS X, with Python & Go packages and a JavaScript port | ||
KVEC | K. Kuhl | Freeware | WIN 2000, WIN XP, WIN Vista/7, OS/2, Linux, BeOS, MAC OS X | |||
Creator | Year released | Year least updated | List price (USD) | License | Supported OS (without emulation) |
NAME | Maximum zoom | Object limit per document | Control point limit | Color management for print | Thumbnails | Adjust image (functions) | Text recognition (OCR) | Scripting support |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Easy Trace | 12800x | No Limit | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Graphic Tracer Professional | No limit | No limit | No limit | No | ? | ? | Yes | No |
Adobe Illustrator | 640x | ? | ? | Yes | ? | ? | No | Yes |
Potrace | N/A | ? | ? | No | ? | ? | No | No |
ImageTracer | N/A | No limit | No limit | No | No | ? | No | Yes |
Scan2CAD | 64K | No limit | No limit | Yes | ? | ? | Yes | Yes |
WinTopo Pro | 512x | No limit | No limit | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
PhotoLine | 25600% | No limit | No limit | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Maximum zoom | Object limit per document | Control point limit | Color management for print | Thumbnails | Adjust image (functions) | Text recognition (OCR) | Scripting support | |
NAME | Export universal DXF | Available in AutoCAD application | Curve recognition | Circle recognition | Arc recognition | Orthogonal line detection | Corner detection | Line connection |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Easy Trace | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Graphic Tracer Professional | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Adobe Illustrator | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Potrace | Yes | No | No | ? | ? | ? | Yes | ? |
ImageTracer | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Scan2CAD | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
WinTopo Pro | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
PhotoLine | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Export universal DXF | Available in AutoCAD application | Curve recognition | Circle recognition | Arc recognition | Orthogonal line detection | Corner detection | Line connection | |
Scanner support | Freehand sketch | Raster filters | Change color depth | Image resize | Rotate | Crop | Raster shapes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Easy Trace | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Graphic Tracer Professional | Yes | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes | Yes | No | N/A |
Adobe Illustrator | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Potrace | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
ImageTracer | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Scan2CAD | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
WinTopo Pro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? |
AutoTrace | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
PhotoLine | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Scanner Support | Freehand sketch | Raster Filters | Change color depth | Image resize | Rotate | Crop | Raster Shapes | |
Fills & hatch | Vector combine | Rotate & move | Polylines | Spline curves | Lines to curves cmd. & vice versa | Vector shapes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Easy Trace | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Graphic Tracer Professional | N/A | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Adobe Illustrator | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Potrace | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
ImageTracer | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Scan2CAD | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
WinTopo Pro | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? | ? |
AutoTrace | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
PhotoLine | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Fills & hatch | Vector combine | Rotate & move | Polylines | Spline curves | Lines to curves cmd. & vice versa | Vector shapes | |
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing. Owing to its fame, the program's name has become genericised as a verb although Adobe disapproves of such use.
In computer graphics and digital photography, a raster graphic represents a two-dimensional picture as a rectangular matrix or grid of pixels, viewable via a computer display, paper, or other display medium. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel. Raster images are stored in image files with varying dissemination, production, generation, and acquisition formats.
Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display and printing hardware, vector data models and file formats, as well as the software based on these data models. Vector graphics are an alternative to raster or bitmap graphics, with each having advantages and disadvantages in specific situations.
A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF.
A vector graphic editor is a computer programs that enables its users to create, compose and edit images with the use of mathematical and geometrical commands rather than individual pixels. This software is used in creating high-definition vector graphic images that can be scaled indefinitely without losing their quality. The output is saved in vector graphic formats, such as EPS, ODG, or SVG.
Sodipodi is a free and open-source vector graphics editor, superseded since 2003 by Inkscape, an independent Sodipodi fork.
Corel Photo-Paint is a raster graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel since 1992. Corel markets the software for Windows and Mac OS operating systems, previously having marketed versions for Linux. Its primary market competitor is Adobe Photoshop.
Xara Designer Pro+ is an image editing program incorporating photo editing and vector illustration tools created by British software company Xara. Xara Xtreme LX was an early open source version for Linux.
Adobe Flash animation is an animation that is created with the Adobe Animate platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Adobe Flash animation refers to both the file format and the medium in which the animation is produced. Adobe Flash animation has enjoyed mainstream popularity since the mid-2000s, with many Adobe Flash-animated television series, television commercials, and award-winning online shorts being produced since then.
In computer graphics, graphics software refers to a program or collection of programs that enable a person to manipulate images or models visually on a computer.
A number of vector graphics editors exist for various platforms. Potential users of these editors will make a comparison of vector graphics editors based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the software license, the feature set, the merits of the user interface (UI) and the focus of the program. Some programs are more suitable for artistic work while others are better for technical drawings. Another important factor is the application's support of various vector and bitmap image formats for import and export.
An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be compressed or uncompressed. If the data is compressed, it may be done so using lossy compression or lossless compression. For graphic design applications, vector formats are often used. Some image file formats support transparency.
Open XML Paper Specification is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format. Microsoft developed it as the XML Paper Specification (XPS). In June 2009, Ecma International adopted it as international standard ECMA-388.
In computer graphics, image tracing, raster-to-vector conversion or raster vectorization is the conversion of raster graphics into vector graphics.
Graphic art software is a subclass of application software used for graphic design, multimedia development, stylized image development, technical illustration, general image editing, or simply to access graphic files. Art software uses either raster or vector graphic reading and editing methods to create, edit, and view art.
The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command line interface utilities for data translation and processing. Projections and transformations are supported by the PROJ library.
sK1 is an open-source, cross-platform illustration program that seeks to be a substitute for professional proprietary software like CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator. Unique project features are CorelDRAW formats importers, tabbed multiple document interface, Cairo-based engine, and color management.
CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Alludo. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs. It can serve as a digital painting platform, desktop publishing suite, and is commonly used for production art in signmaking, vinyl and laser cutting and engraving, print-on-demand and other industry processes. Reduced-feature Standard and Essentials versions are also offered.
Adobe Animate is a multimedia authoring and computer animation program developed by Adobe.
Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are digital photographs, traditional photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs or editing illustrations with any traditional art medium. Graphic software programs, which can be broadly grouped into vector graphics editors, raster graphics editors, and 3D modelers, are the primary tools with which a user may manipulate, enhance, and transform images. Many image editing programs are also used to render or create computer art from scratch. The term "image editing" usually refers only to the editing of 2D images, not 3D ones.