Best websites to convert your raster images to vector for free

Some of you know the difference between raster images or so called bitmaps and vectors. Raster images (bitmaps) are made from thousands of pixels (dots) with different colors. Vector images are completely different. They use mathematical relationships between points and paths (lines and curves) which are used to produce an image. The advantage of vectors towards raster images is that they are small size and while resizing them they don’t lose any detail. In other side, raster images are heavy and when you resize them, they lose details, so that’s why they need high resolutions in order to maintain the quality and the details. The designers, mostly prefer to work with vectors, but that doesn’t mean that  they always have vectors available. Fortunately there are some great websites which offer you conversion of your raster images (bitmaps) to vector. But before we continue, let me tell you that converting online your raster images to vector may not always give the desired effect, so to do that, it needs a little mastery.

1. VectorMagic.com

VectorMagic is definitely the best online service for bitmap images to vector conversion. You will be able to generate your vector in five steps: attach your image, configuration of the given options, vectorizing, results of conversion and completed vector ready for download. It has a great user interface, very intuitive and easy to use, no sign up required but after completing the conversion of your bitmap image to vector, in order to download the final product you need to subscribe to VectorMagic. To see how VectorMagic works, take a minute and see it here.

2. Online-Convert.com

Online-Convert.com is an online service which allows easy and fast conversion of various types of files and documents, like audio, video, pictures, office documents, archive files etc. But the best thing they offers is the online conversion of bitmap image to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. In order to convert your image to vector, you just need to attach you image and click Convert. When it’s ready, it will be automatically downloaded directly to your PC.

3. Autotrace Web Interface

Autotrace Web Interface it’s a great raster image to vector conversion system developed by RO IT Systems and built by open-source components such as Autotrace, ImageMagick, and various unix and linux image-processing components. It has a simple interface and very easy to use. First you have to attach your image and then filling some text fields regarding to the conversion, like line information, noise handling, so you need to have some knowledge in order to get the most of it.

Conclusion

As I said in the beginning, converting your raster images (bitmaps) to vector using online tools will not give you the desired effect, but still if you have some knowledge in the field of graphics theory you will be able to get great results. These 3 online tools are the only that offer you raster to image conversion for free, but there are also website specialized for professional image to vector conversion, but to have their service you have to pay good amount of money. If you ask me which of these services I will recommend to you, without doubt I will say that you should go for VectorMagic, for the fact that it gives amazing results while converting.

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10 Free Social Media Icon Packs for web designers and bloggers

Social Media Icons are a very important element for every blog and website. So every webmaster and blog owner should take count of this must have feature, because thats the best way to attract your readers to join you to your Social Media site accounts. So here is a small collection of Free Social Media Icon Packs which will help you decorate your website and blog.

Hand drawn Social Media icons

It is a free Social Media icons set designed by Ondrej Rafaj made for bloggers and web designers. It includes 15 original icons for Google, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, RSS, Technorati, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Yahoo, GMail, Feed Burner, RedDit and calendar.

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Free Social Media Bubblicons

A very beautiful free Social Media icon set, including 20 icons in PNG format with 48×48 px size from most popular Social Media sites. The author of these icons is Supratim Nayak from designinstruct.com.

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Buddycons – Vector Social Media Icons

This Social Media icons pack –  Buddycons, contains 126 vector social media icons in PNG format. You can find them in two shapes, circular and rounded rectangle. These icons are free to use for personal and professional purpose. This social media icons collection is designed by Orman Clark.

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Bulb Social Media Icons

A great collection of 9 PNG Social Media icons in form of a bulb with liquid. Designed by Sargsyan

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OLED Social Media Icons

Interesting OLED style Social Media Icons designed by Arrioch.

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Sticker Style Social Media Icons

The sticker style Social Media Icons pack contains 11 icons from the most famous Social Media sites, designed by Clay Clauley.

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Social Media Icons by carrizo

This pack contains 17 Social Media icons in PNG format, designed by Carrizo.

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Jet Black Social Media Icon Set

These social media icons are free and contain all of the most popular social media and content sharing sites. The icons come in three sizes (32×32, 64×64, 128×128).

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WG Social Media Icons

A social media icon pack containing 16 social media icons. All items are in png format. Dimensions are 48×48 pixels and these icons are designed from WebGraphics.net.

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Social Media Disc Icons

Great social media icon pack, designed by z3olyte.com. The pack contains 11 social media icons in 4 sizes: 256 x 256, 128 x 128, 64 x 64 and 48 x 48.

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Create tribute sites for your loved ones with YourTribute

We all want to make happy our loved ones, the persons that mean something to us and especially when there is some reason to do it, like weddings, birthdays, graduation party or similar. If one of your most loved persons is having a big day in his life, thenYourTribute will assist you to prepare something special for him.

YourTribute is an online tool that allows you to create personal websites (a tribute) for special someone or a special event. It is a new baby, a wedding, a graduation, birthday, memorials and anniversaries, YourTribute is there to help you create personalized websites or a so called Tribute site  for any kind of event a people.
A Tribute can be created in minutes, but remains online for life to provide an everlasting record of the special occasion. YourTribute gives you great features in order to create an interesting tribute site like: beautiful themes for any kind of occasion,  photo sharing, videos, friend invitations, blogging, virtual presents, integration with Facebook.
A great feature is that YourTribute allows you to import your contacts from your Facebook account and invite them to your events. As I said before, Your Tribute is integrated with Facebook, which makes it easy for you to share your Tribute with your Facebook friends.You can also send beautiful online invitations, for FREE, from your Tribute. Choose from one of our numerous stylish designs and add a custom message to your online invitation.

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Create flowcharts and sitemaps online for free with SlickPlan

SlickPlan is a web based flowchart/diagram and sitemap generator. To use SlickPlan for free you need register, but it is an advanced registration. As an option, before registering, you can try the demo version. But after it, I’m sure you will be very satisfied with the options which SlickPlan offers to you. Registered users have the option to save the generated sitemaps and flowchars, as well they can convert them into HTML or PDF format.

SlickPlan was developed with the web designer and developer in mind, but it can be used by anyone who needs a quick and professional sitemap or flowchart for their planning project. You can create a visually stunning, free sitemap in seconds and send it directly to your clients via an HTML link or exported PDF. When you’re done, easily generate the HTML as an unordered list and insert it into your page.

SlickPlan is a great solution for the most of web designers and web developers who often use the navigational charts to represent ideas and projects to their clients and associates. However, in addition to professionals in this field, it is a great tool for those who need easy and simple creation of organizational charts. This website generator is useful, the design is intuitive, so this combined with the opportunity for unlimited free use, making it a valuable tool to help you in creating flowcharts, diagrams and sitemaps.

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Create logo online for free with LogoEase

The logos are a valuable part of any company, brand, organization, business, website or blog. That is the element that identifies them and makes people remember you. If you want people to recognize your blog or website, it is important to create a logo for it which makes you and your website to be more serious in front of your visitors. The logo is your best representative, so we should never neglect the power of the logo by saving our money on design. But if you need a quick, decent and practical solution then I suggest you to use LogoEase, a great web based tool which allows you to create a logo with minimal effort.

The service initially provides a selection of predefined logos grouped by topics: medicine, sports, writing, music, etc.., which later you can process them along with other elements. You can insert text by selecting the font, size and color of the letters. The elements can be arranged in layers, rotate, turn, increase, reduce, move and paint the appropriate color, piece by piece.

LogoEase features simple and intuitive interface that allows you to create free logos in a few minutes. After finishing you can download them in the following formats: eps, png, jpg and tiff, but only if you are registered user. You can download and save a total of 10 logos at once.

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Edit your PSD files online with Pixlr

Pixlr is a website that offers services for editing of your photos. The reason why I’m writing for it is that this website not only allows you to edit your photos without a problem but also opens and edits your PSD files. The first contact I had with Pixlr I was amazed. I needed to edit quickly some of my PSD files in my friends computer who had not installed Photoshop in it . I googled for online PSD editor and I landed at Pixlr.com.

Could you imagine a Photoshop application running online?! Yes, that was the impression I got from it. It has similar interface as Photoshop and other photo editing softwares, similar editing tools, menus and the most amazing thing in it is the fact that the Pixlr online image editor supports layers. Pixlr editor offers a fast editing of your images with huge set of tools like: crop tool, lasso, shape drawing tool, color replacer, color picker, red eye reduction tool and literally everything you have seen in Photoshop. After editing your PSD file you can quickly save it in the popular image file formats like png, jpg, bmp and pxd. You can edit your layers and also adjust them with various effects.

But that’s just a part of the services that Pixlr offers. Alongside the photo editor, Pixlr offers the following services:
Pixlr Express - the online tool which allows you to quickly add effects to your pictures with one click.
Pixlr Grabber - extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome which offer print screen tools to capture pictures from your browser.
Pixlr imm.io – image uploading service which allows you to quickly upload your images and share them with your friends.

My last words

For me Pixlr is one of the most valuable services that can be found on the Internet today. I say this because of the fact that every single online service is started with the aim to help someone and Pixlr is for sure among them.

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Cut your pictures online with CutMyPic

There are a lots of online based photo-editing websites which offer quite good options and features in order to get decent results in your pictures.I posted a short review for Pixlr, one of the most popular online photo-editing tools. The fact that these photo-editors are online based, they are the best solution for you when you need to edit you photos quickly. But there are always more specific solutions for specific cases. So the web tool we are suggesting now will help you to edit your pictures online as quickly as possible.

CutMyPic is an very interesting web based tool which will offers you a quick and simple editing of your pictures, without need for registration. It will allows you to discard unnecessary parts of the image, to soften its edges and set shadow effects.

The procedure is very simple: you attach a picture from the main page of the site and wait to be redirected to the studio. You wait, depending on the size of the image, which has no prescribed limit. Once the image is uploaded, you can crop the part you need, to the newly created picture you can add softened corners and edges and set shadow with the desired intensity. Also you can rotate the picture, and on the other side, CutMyPic will give you the information on how much your picture is reduced in pixels. Once you press the “Done” button,  you can download your edited image or send it via mail.

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