ImageMagick and Autotrace config like RO IT web interface?

[SixitsNat]

We're a bit of a pickle here.

We're trying to take png files and batch convert them to vector based files (svg) to then import into Adobe's Flash.

We're all on OSX 10.6 (snow leopard). Autotrace was built from source, then IM was installed from the pre-compiled binary on the IM site (again, for OSX 10.6).

No matter how we pass the arguements to IM, or autotrace, we can't get it to work.

We tried the RO IT Systems web interface, and with these options its giving us a very good result.

/usr/local/bin/autotrace --input-format=png --output-file=/srv/www/vhosts/www.roitsystems.com/htdocs/r2v/2010/04/ ... nal.14.svg --dpi=1024 --color-count=16 --despeckle-level=12 --despeckle-tightness=1 --corner-always-threshold=60 --line-threshold=0.01 --width-weight-factor=0.01 --line-reversion-threshold=0.01 --preserve-width --remove-adjacent-corners /srv/www/vhosts/www.roitsystems.com/htdocs/r2v/2010/04/ ... nal.14.png

No matter how we try though, we cant get our internal build of IM with AT options to work like this.

Looking for some solutions here, and ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

Nathaniel Hunter

[fmw42]

Did you install the RSVG delegate library?

convert -list configure

Then look at line starting DELEGATES and see if it list rsvg

[anthony]

While IM uses autotrace for generating SVG output, it may not be the best method for you.
IM is a raster image handler, and not really designed for generating SVG.

Autotrace is also not really part of the ImageMagick package, just a delegate library.

Okay that's the disclaimers.

I myself have used autotrace, and it was my work that caused it to be come a delegate within IM.

However autotrace does not work well with general images. It is designed for vectorisation of bitmap shapes and simple images, containing large areas of solid color. Images with lots of colors (each pixel being a separate color) do not vectorize well, and this may be your problem.

My best suggestion is to look at simplifing your images (using IM) before passing the result to autotrace (or other vectorization program). The Autotrace website goes into this with a lot more detail.
http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/

You may also like to look at potrace as an alternative.
http://potrace.sourceforge.net/
I did not like potrace as it 'scaled' the coordinate locations into image coordinates rather than pixel coordinates, making it harder to extract SVG drawing 'paths' for re-use.

Remember -- simplify your images first!!!!

[roit]

Nathaniel,

There's more to the autotrace build than just building around imagemagick itself.
There are additional image library dependencies involved that are not provided with the pre-packaged IM build, so you have to compile all the required dependencies and then compile IM.

Ronan
Author, ROIT Autotrace workflow.
http://www.roitsystems.com