I would like to convert images that have been uploaded by the user (in various formats and conditions) to a vector image format such as .eps. I'm primarily working in PHP.
What options exist?
A:
PHP is not an image editor. it is hypertext preprocessor.
You have to move to serverfault.com, or even better on some image processing resource and ask there for some command line utility that can be run from PHP using system() command.
Col. Shrapnel
2010-07-07 03:56:44
I understand the PHP is not an image editor. PHP can interface with many useful libs such as GD and ImageMagik without relying on system().
Jon K
2010-10-07 21:22:03
@Jon I can't say GD is whatever useful, but in general - yes. It can even control a hydraulic press via com port. It doesn't mean that questions about hydraulic presses are suitable here.
Col. Shrapnel
2010-10-07 21:26:51
+1
A:
There are a small number of autotracing software projects released under GPU (for example, POTRACE that you could run via system commands. I can't attest to their quality. Tracing almost always requires some element of human supervision to avoid things looking like a mess of broken pottery, but you won't know until you try. Rather than triggering the tracer via PHP, I would use PHP simply to save incoming images to a temporary folder and then, through cronjob (one- or two-per-minute), crank through the holding folder in batches (you could pace it that way and avoid it being used as a way to DoS your site).
I'm thinking of doing something slightly similar (though not graphic related) for an upcoming project, and I'm considering doing all my heavy lifting on a desktop machine, which would fetch all incoming files and process them before FTPing them back to the server. I'm somewhat nervous about having any complex resource-intensive script like this running on a web server.
Andrew
2010-07-07 04:29:14