How to convert a JPEG image into SVG format using ImageMagick?

Question

How to convert a JPEG image into SVG format using ImageMagick?

Answer 1

Actually, with a complete installation of a recent version of ImageMagick it should be as easy as:

convert  some.jpeg  some.svg

Of course, ImageMagick cannot do it all by itself -- it uses delegates (helper programs) to handle SVG input or output. (This has been pointed out by other answers already.)

To see a (partial) list of all delegates (and their respective commands), run

convert  -list delegate

To see the config file where all the delegate secrets hide, see

convert  -list delegate | grep delegates.xml

To see a (partial) list of SVG handling delegates, run

convert  -list delegate | grep -i svg

However, ImageMagick likes to put some of its external helper utilities into 'stealth' mode and doesn't necessarily reveal their presence when using above commands.

Just look into the delegates.xml file itself. On my system it's:

grep -i svg /opt/local/etc/ImageMagick/delegates.xml | grep -i --color stealth

  

  

As you may see, on my system the ImageMagick installation automatically uses (amongst others)...

• ...inkscape to convert SVG to PNG;
• ...autotrace to convert PNM to SVG;

Of course, one could argue the benefits of rather using autotrace directly -- but that would require to manually convert the whatever-input-format to PNM first. So for this preliminary step you'd probably use ImageMagick anyway...