TECHNOLOGY
Potrace
Peter Selinger's 2001 polygon-based tracing algorithm that converts bitmap images to smooth vector outlines — a deterministic instrument whose signature comment (Created by potrace) appears in millions of SVG files and marks a specific moment in the history of machine-assisted making.
Potrace is an algorithm and accompanying software tool, released by Peter Selinger in 2001 under the GPL, that converts bitmap images into vector outlines. Given a black-and-white raster image, potrace produces a set of smooth Bézier curves that approximate the boundaries of the shapes — output suitable for SVG, PDF, PostScript, or EPS. The tool is characteristic of a class of pre-AI computational technology: explicit, deterministic, publishable as a mathematical paper, and auditable line by line. Its signature — the comment Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019 — embedded in every file it produces, has become a small historical artifact in its own right, a kind of provenance stamp that distinguishes geometrically traced vector art from the statistical renderings of modern AI image generation.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Potrace emerged from a specific problem in the late 1990s: font designers, logo makers, and graphic artists working with