Image to SVG conversion with Python

[Carlo DiCelico]

On Nov 16, 11:48 am, Dave Angel <da... at ieee.org> wrote:
> Carlo DiCelico wrote:
> > I need to convert JPEG and PNG files to SVG. I'm currently using PIL
> > to generate the JPEG/PNG files to begin with. However, I need to be
> > able to scale the generated images up in size without a loss of image
> > quality. Using SVG seems to be the best way to do this, other than
> > generating the images in the maximum size/resolution in the first
> > place, which would be too resource intensive.
>
> > I've looked around online and have found some tools for creating SVGs
> > but none for converting an image into SVG.
>
> > Does anyone have any experience doing this? What would be the best way
> > to go about this?
>
> > Thanks,
> > Carlo
>
> I have no direct experience with SVG, but have used and analyzed other
> formats.
>
> I expect it's unreasonable to convert jpg or png files to SVG.  The
> latter is a vector format, and can't efficiently represent pixels, which
> is all you have in the jpg files.  And even if you did it brute force,
> it still wouldn't scale any better than the original jpg.  If the jpg
> file was generated from lines, and wasn't too crowded, it *might* be
> possible to analyze it to reconstruct the vectors, but it would be both
> very slow, and inaccurate.
>
> In Photoshop PSD files, you can have vector layers and RGB layers (plus
> other kinds).  You convert a vector layer (such as text) to bits by
> rasterizing (or flattening).  And once you do, it no longer scales
> cleanly.  For instance, when I'm sending composite images to a printer,
> I get much better quality sending the raster portion separate from the
> text, either as layers in a PSD file, or in a PDF file, or even as two
> separate files that they will merge later.  (In that case, I usually
> send a low-res flattened file, so they can see how it's supposed to look)
>
> I'd say you should change your python code to generate the svg files
> first (perhaps usinghttp://code.activestate.com/recipes/325823/)
>
> Then you might want to use (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php
> ) to convert it to jpg or other format.
>
> DaveA

Thanks, this makes perfect sense.