Recommendations for converting raster images to vector graphics

Question

If a person is looking to batch convert a large number of raster images into vector graphics, are there any tools out there that do that well?

For an example, think of j

Answer 1

I'll enthusiastically second the nomination of Vector Magic.

I recently did some raster to vector conversion work with Adobe Live Trace (Photoshop CS2). It required quite a bit of tuning to get frmo horrible to acceptable.

I tried exactly the same conversion with Vector Magic (used the online version, the first two are free), the configuration questions were easy, the pallete editing was simple and intuitive, and the results were excellent, extremely clean, on the first try. Clearly they have sorted out the issues in de-noising and de-anti-aliasing to produce clean vectors. (In contrast to Adobe which takes noise tones and alias tones and decides to make lots of tweaky little vectors out of them.)

Another alternative is Corel PowerTRACE, though I have no experience with it.