Vector Magic Desktop Edition

**steve.ledger** · 17 July 2008, 09:52 AM

Vector Magic Desktop Edition has been launched.
At $295.00 each license ( 1 - 4 ) it seems pretty pricey for a tracing program on the face of it, though businesses and professionals who regularly need to trace submitted raster work might find this a small price.
The download is available for testing purposes, but it's save disabled.

**iamtheblues** · 17 July 2008, 11:41 AM

Attempted download from that link gave me this message at about 95% complete. AV: ESET NOD 32
Saludos,
Bob.

**Egg Bramhill** · 17 July 2008, 08:36 PM

Hi Steve. Yes Vector Magic seems to have lost the plot regarding their price structure. The product is good, but not great at the prices they are asking and the very limited application use. In this case I'd rather put my $295 towards purchasing CS3.

**Improv** · 17 July 2008, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Hi Steve. Yes Vector Magic seems to have lost the plot regarding their price structure. The product is good, but not great at the prices they are asking and the very limited application use. In this case I'd rather put my $295 towards purchasing CS3.

Also worth noting in the video was that they showed Inkscape instead of Xara Xtreme! Hmm...

**ss-kalm** · 18 July 2008, 03:13 AM

At $295 per licence, I'm just speechless ..... "Pricey" doesn't begin to come close.

**Regular** · 18 July 2008, 03:55 AM

It does a very good job, but not sure I could justify the cost for me.

This is a trace of Mona Lisa and the second is the vector paths shown.

**Albacore** · 18 July 2008, 09:38 AM

Going roughly for the same price as Silhouette plugin for Illustrator which is $249 but Vector Magic does a slightly better job. On the plus sign for Silhouette you have more control over the final outcome. It seems a lost opportunity on the marketing side of this programme as if it was priced under $200 I think more people would buy it as I worked in a newspaper office and we had two machines with Silhouette installed out of 40 in the department to trace logos for adverts. The manger would not buy more so 2 people were landed with all the tracing to do.

**Xhris** · 12 February 2009, 08:27 PM

Yes, I'm totally disgusted. I just found out about their $300 price for the desktop version. I've lost all respect for these people. There is absolutely no justification for such extortion. It should cost around $50 like Xara3D or something. And something else I find really disgusting about them is that they are very surreptitious with their price display. You have to go through the hassle of creating an account with them before they even let you see the price--immediately showing they're knowingly greedy and embarrassed about the price. My account with them lasted for all of 5 seconds and I'm not looking back until their prices change.

**Idefriginit** · 12 February 2009, 11:19 PM

Am i missing something? Illustrator comes with LiveTrace? Why get a thrid party tracer that does the same thing in a program you get as a package?

Unless Xara doesnt come with an auto tracer?

There is an old auto tracer that was stand alone from Adobe during the Illy 10 era called Streamline. Im sure you could pick that up for like $10 these days lol.

**handrawn** · 12 February 2009, 11:53 PM

you are not comparing like with like - they only do the same thing in the sense all jazz bands play the same music [ jazz]

streamline will do CAD type tracing as it was designed for - but photographs, forget it - stone age

adobe live trace is good for logos and for some photo work

ditto xtreme ditto inkscape - with differences - inkscape for logos, xtreme for photos IMO

vector magic is very good with photographs........... and everything else too - try it..

you pays your money.....