- Source: Potrace
Potrace () is cross-platform, open-source software which converts bitmapped images into vector graphics. It is written and maintained by Peter Selinger.
Properties
Various graphical frontends are available for the command-line application Potrace. Notably, it has been integrated with Inkscape, giving Inkscape its Trace Bitmap action. FontForge can use Potrace to import a bitmap image into a font. Potrace is also used by the music engraving program LilyPond. An open-source progressive web app that uses Potrace is SVGcode.
Potrace's input and output is black and white (colored images are greyscaled before processing). However, Inkscape is capable of producing color images by decomposing each channel into several black and white images and tracing them separately with Potrace. The commercial Total Vectorize program also uses Potrace as its core.
Potrace is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. A non-GPL version of Potrace called "Potrace Professional" is available under license from Selinger's company, Icosasoft Software, Inc.
Examples
See also
Comparison of raster-to-vector conversion software
References
Further reading
Peter Selinger, Potrace: a polygon-based tracing algorithm, Sep 2003
(in French) Elisa de Castro Guerra, Inkscape: Apprenez, pratiquez, créez, Pearson Education France, 2007, ISBN 2-7440-2158-X, pp. 108–111
Yannis Haralambous, Fonts & encodings, O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2007, ISBN 0-596-10242-9, pp. 500–501
Karel Píška, Creating Type 1 Fonts from METAFONT Sources: Comparison of Tools, Techniques and Results in TeX, XML, and digital typography: International Conference on TeX, XML, and Digital Typography, held jointly with the 25th Annual Meeting of the TeX Users Group, TUG 2004, Xanthi, Greece, August 30 - September 3, 2004 ; proceedings, LNCS Volume 3130, Editor Apostolos Syropoulos, Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-540-22801-2, pp. 240–256, preprint
External links
Official website on SourceForge
Vince Vatter, How to make slides from handwritten notes using potrace
Online version of Potrace ported with WebAssembly