Pictures to Vector Graphics. (Vectorized Photo Camera's and Camcorders.)

[Skybuck Flying]

Hello,

I am trying to view a picture of a audio receiver in a pdf... I want to zoom
in on it but I cannot because it's a picture... containing a digitized
version of reality... or let's call it a pixelized version of reality.
(Probably down sampled/scaled for smaller size.)

What I would neeeeeed is a "vectorized" version of reality... so I can more
or less infinetly zooooommm in on it.

So I propose research into a new sort of digital photo camera and possibly
even video camera:

1. Instead of using "pixels"... the digital photo camera tries to translate
what it sees into vector graphics as good as it can... so that the graphics
can be scaled and such.

2. The digital photo camera can probably take an insane high resolution
photo... but this would take too much space/pixels for storing it all the
time.

So instead it's translated to some vectorized graphic which could take far
less space but still have superb quality ?!

Bye,
Skybuck.

[Joel Koltner]

Skybuck,

As with the speakers yesterday, what you're proposing here is well-known and
has been around for many years. Just do a little Googling for raster to
vector conversion software; it's quite common. There are free pieces of
software to do this, and most of the "heavyweight" graphics manipulation
packages such as CorelDraw can do it too.

The "tries to translate what it sees into vectors graphics as good as it can"
is the sticky point -- in most cases pictures of any real complexity require
at least some manual cleanup once they've been converted.

As for vector graphics taking less space... clearly this is the case for
simple line drawings. As images become more complex (with many
objects/colors/complex textures), at some point the bitmap can be smaller.
Simple example: 3D video games, where many scenes are now complex enough that
their vector descriptions require more storage than an image rednered at, say,
1280x1024. (Note that 3D video games typically use a combination of bitmapped
textures "wrapped" around polygonal vector "frames" -- this retains much of
the benefit of both bitmaps and vector graphics, so long as you don't zoom in
*too* far.)

---Joel

[Skybuck Flying]

Maybe a combination then... everything that can be clearly vectorized is
vectorized and the rest remains a bitmap/texture between the vectorization
or so... add some trilineair interpolation and results might start looking
good.

Especially text should be vectorized well so it can be read well.

Bye,
Skybuck.

[Michael A. Terrell]

I still have the 'rasterizer' for a size 'B' Tektronix inkjet
plotter. It uses a 68000 processor and for its day, a lot of RAM.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!