Contour vectorization (SUMMARY)

[David Osborne]

I asked on this list about software to do raster to vector conversion 
of contours:

> I would like to be able to take a colour scanned image of a map and 
> extract the contours as vectors, to be able to prepare a DEM of the 
> scanned area.

The replies I had recommended the following software:

Mapscan

URL: http://www.undp.org/popin/softproj/software/mapscan.htm
Platforms: DOS, Windows
Cost: free
Input formats: Paintbrush (PCX), GEM (IMG) and TIFF uncompressed; black 
and white images only, not colour.
Output formats: AutoCAD (DXF) and PopMap
Recommended by: Dieter Lehmann

R2V

URL: http://www.ablesw.com/r2v/
Platforms: Windows 9X/NT
Cost: $1495 ($960 educational); demo version limited to 256x256 raster 
available for download
Input formats: many, incl. BMP, TIFF, GeoTIFF
Output formats: many, incl. ARC/INFO, DXF, MapInfo
Recommended by: Johnny Duke

WinTopo

URL: http://www.softsoft.net/wintopo/
Platforms: Windows; Linux version under development
Cost: free version available for download; Professional version to be 
released soon
Input formats: BMP (free version); TIFF, GIF, BMP (Pro version)
Output formats: BMP (free version); TIFF, BMP (Pro version)
Recommended by: Bong Khin Fah


My thanks to those who replied.

David

-- 
David Osborne                         david.osborne at nottingham.ac.uk
School of Geography             phone/voicemail: +44 (0)115 951 3397
University of Nottingham                    fax: +44 (0)115 951 3358
Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK     http://www.geog.nottingham.ac.uk/~osborne