WinToPo

[Jim Dornon]

Gas anyone ever used a program call WinToPo ? It is free vectorizing software. Found it on Google yesterday. What does it do exactly ? Jim

[Joe Pelonio]

I have not used it, but it's the freeware version of a more powerful program that does the same kind of function as Corel Trace. Coverts bitmaps to vector files. I heard that the free version is not very good, that you really have to buy the full version, but if you already have Corel it's not needed.

[Peter Boyford]

Seems to be a simple trace-program... You would want to try Inkscape.org, if you're playing with free vector applications.

/Peter

[Dan Hintz]

I played with WinTopo a couple of years ago when I was working on engraving automotive windscreens for my LEDs. It was fairly useful if you had a super-clean image, but I remember it having real problems with "dirty" images... no amount of playing with the settings would get me a clean vector image. The result was either too coarse, too noisy, or contained too many vectors. I spent more time cleaning up images than was worth the money.

I have Inkscape bookmarked but haven't had the opportunity to play with it.

[Jim Dornon]

Thanks. So it's not really a photograv type software ? Jim

[Dan Hintz]

Thanks. So it's not really a photograv type software ? Jim
Definitely not. It was originally designed to convert scanned images of topographic maps to vector-based files. This is fairly easy to do even with naive algorithms as topo maps have the iso lines quite clearly delineated, often in brown. A quick strip of all color but brown, run through WinTopo, and you have a great vector-based map. With some more intelligent algorithms, it will automatically assign the proper heights to each iso line using character recognition.

Photograv is a whole 'nother animal. It is designed to pixelate an image based upon material and equipment specs in an attempt to provide the best possible engraving image.

[Jim Dornon]

Ok thanks for the info. Jim