
Ask HN: The best way to convert paper drawings to digital images ? - code_devil
I am making an application for exchanging virtual goods. I have someone in the family that is very talented and can draw pretty much any form of art on paper. However, I want these drawings for my application. What is the best/easiest/cheapest way to convert these images to digital format ?
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patio11
Scan it, ship it off to your outsourced art talent, tell them what sort of
deliverable you need, and let them worry about how they accomplish it. They're
the professionals, after all.

(Outsourced artistic talent is very, very cheap. Find somebody you like on one
of the sites, develop a working relationship, bring them work on a regular
basis. Its a win for you and a win for them: you don't waste your super-
valuable time doing low-value-added tasks, they don't have J. Clueless Client
asking for 15 revisions and then dickering around with actually paying them
for services rendered.)

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pasbesoin
If you want vector graphics, my meager experience fwiw:

Some months ago, I used potrace to convert drawings to SVG. Specifically, on a
Windows box, if I recall correctly, I used it via the front end Rasterbater
(needs .NET 2). I was quite satisfied with the result.

This was for some simple black on white images. The Wikipedia page for potrace
(first link, below) has a bit of language about Inkscape being able to do a
color decomposition.

    
    
        > Inkscape is capable of producing color images by
        > decomposing each channel into several black and white
        > images and tracing them separately with Potrace.
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrace>

<http://potrace.sourceforge.net/>

Link to Rasterbater is under the anchor below (it's a link to a zip of the
program; the program doesn't appear to have it's own descriptive page,
although the hosting site has a one line description on the default page for
the domain):

<http://potrace.sourceforge.net/#other>

Regarding Inkscape, this boingboing page (I happened on while googling
Rasterbater) has the following comment:

[http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/21/web-site-converts-
ph.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/21/web-site-converts-ph.html)

    
    
        > Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ ) uses Potrace
        > (http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ ) and optionally
        > Autotrace ( http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/ ) for
        > it's own raster to vector. It costs 100% less than
        > the price of Illustrator CS or Corel, a.k.a free.

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nreece
Scan, and Vectorize with Vector Magic - <http://vectormagic.com/home>

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NonEUCitizen
recently, i:

1\. used my camera to take photo of an illustrated page from a very old book
(copyright expired). i borrowed the book via LINK+, and it was delivered to my
local library for free.

2\. used Vector Magic to vectorize (within 2 free "credits" limit) the image.

3\. edited result of #2 with Inkscape, so it's much more "stylized" (much
simplified; just a few filled-and-stroked paths).

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poppysan
A scanner? If you want it vector then use illustrator to vector-trace it...

There are far too many options...

