Wow, what a great find. If you’re into computer graphics then this site will be of immense use to you. It will convert raster graphics to vector graphics for free. If you have no idea what I’m on about, I’ll give you a quick explanation of what vector graphics are first, and why they’re so much better than rasters for computer work.
Raster
No it’s not what you call a religious type from Jamaica, it is in fact the name given to the graphic type that is made of lots of tiny squares of varying shades of colour. Look at the image to the right. You will notice that everything is blocky and that the squares that are next to each other are similar in shade. This is called “anti-aliasing” and is a trick to our eyes so that we can see smooth curves as curves, and not a progression of blocks. However, this trick only works when you’re zoomed right out of the image. The closer you get the worse the blocks appear. And if there is no anti-aliasing the picture will look blocky unless the resolution is massive (again essentially making the blocks even smaller to the eye, which hides the “steps”.)
So what use are raster images? They look rubbish, don’t they? Well they are, but they have their uses. For one thing, everything digital that captures an image (a digital camera, a scanner etc.) will do so as a raster. And also everything digital that displays an image, also does so as a raster. And if it isn’t a raster, it will be converted by the screen to one without you even knowing.. It just has to be that way for everything to be compatible. It’s the same reason that digital cameras need higher and higher resolutions as people start to print more and more detailed pictures – they would just appear too blocky if they weren’t that way.
Vector
Now, compare the image on the right to the raster one. The detail has not been lost when we’ve blown it up. The reason is that this image isn’t stored as a series of squares – this one is stored as a series of formulas for circles, and curves and squares and things. As this image is essentially a load of maths, it scales perfectly. Keep on zooming, and the details remain. It’s the same technology as that used by the fonts on any modern computer system. If you check, there is one file for every font, but you can have any size you want without losing detail. The real world, of course, isn’t made out of maths – at least not in an easy to store way – so that’s why vector images are essentially the realm of the computer artist and why they’re not interchangeable.
So here lies the problem.. What if you need a vector image to do things? What if you’re into rendering & CGI, or you want to create a nice christmas card from your tiny company logo? Normally of course it would mean either putting up with the horrible blockiness or re-creating it in a vector art package – something like Corel Paint.
In steps Vectormagic. A website & web application created by the boffins of Stanford University. Vectormagic will walk you through the process of converting a raster to a vector from beginning to end in only 4 steps. If at any point you want to change one of the settings, you can easily go backwards and forwards. Don’t let me put you off, there are only 3 choices or so for every step that are explained in plain english. In fact they really just require you to zoom into your raster image to have a look at the quality and things. And the results are amazing. For instance, the two images in this example are taken from a raster I downloaded ages ago of the half life 2 logo. The first one is the original, whilst the second is the Vectormagic-erised version. It will however, as you would imagine, struggle with a hugely complicated image with lots of colours. But for logos or high-contrast pictures it works a treat. [SHOW ME]
For the uninitiated, Flock is an open-source social network browser based on the same codebase as Firefox (Mozilla/Gecko). Because of this it has the same speed and security of it’s better known cousin. I had used Flock for a short period about six months ago so I thought it was time I revisited the project, and do a mini review of the current features.
