[OS X TeX] i-installer and autotrace

[Stephen Moye]

On Jul 4, 2005, at 10:23 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Le 4 juil. 05 à 16:03, Stephen Moye a écrit :
>
>
>>> On Jul 4, 2005, at 15:31, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> That said, I prefer personally potrace to autotrace.
>>>>
>>
>> I too prefer potrace, but autotrace works on a wider variety of  
>> file types such as tiff.
>>
>
> Earlier this year I traced a JPEG logo to convert it to EPS. After  
> much failed attempts, I used the following route:
>
> - Use either GraphicConverter (came free on my Mac), or convert  
> from ImageMagick, to convert the JPEG to black-and-white BMP. I'm  
> not sure which of the two I used eventually. Possibly  
> GraphicConverter, as it provides a GUI for setting the value of the  
> threshold used when converting to B&W -- and seeing live the  
> influence of this value. The choice of the threshold has a crucial  
> effect on the quality of the final EPS file.
>
> - Applied both potrace and autotrace to the BMP file independently.  
> Found out the output of potrace is cleaner (less tracing artifacts).
>
> I also tried letting potrace and/or autotrace use their own  
> algorithms for converting the original color file to black-and- 
> white before tracing it: the output was much worse than with the  
> manual conversion.
>
> That said, it was all before hearing Illustrator CS2 includes a  
> tracing algorithm. Now I probably wouldn't go that route.

Hmmm... this thread is in danger of becoming seriously OT -- but I  
cannot help but reflect that the Adobe tools for autotrace have  
heretofore been odd in one way or another. Even Streamline was hard  
to control so that you could predict what sort of output you'd get  
without wasting hours fiddling with the settings. I tried Silhouette  
(www.silhouetteonline.com) and found it remarkably capable, though I  
don't do enough of that sort of thing to justify the cost of US$360.

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