img2bez: Raster-to-Vector Autotracing for Type Design

Eli Heuer
Eli Heuer Posts: 4
edited 5:25PM in Type Design Software
https://elih.net/blog/img2bez/

I have a new blog post draft explaining the img2bez Rust crate I made for my Runebender forks and the open-source font AI solo startup/project I am working on. This is still a draft I am editing, and I will be running eval loops with AI agents all weekend improving the algorithms. I am posting it here looking for feedback before I publish the final version Monday, any substantial feedback will be credited at the end of the blog post.

I think it is a real breakthrough in this space and gets better results than any existing procedural autotracer, but I am looking for and open to criticism and feedback about why this is not better than existing solutions.

The blog post has an interactive demo of img2bez, compiled from Rust to WASM. So you can try it right in the blog post and even drag your own glyph images into the demo to trace them.

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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,695
    edited 6:07PM
    Hi Eli. Do you have any recommendations for input image to get best results. I did a quick test with this image:

    and the results are pretty bad:


  • ericlu
    ericlu Posts: 14
    I've tried it on a few glyphs and I'm not sure I'm seeing it significantly improve results over the native potrace. is it trained to work on specific types of fonts? Here is a comparison of the native traced glyphs and then the img2bez traced glyph below:




    Here's also a comparison of the two fonts (first traced with potrace and some cleanup, second traced with img2bez)
    1. https://static.mixfont.com/assets/20260626-184828-gothicgumdrop-regular-blz2sd9n.ttf
    2. https://static.mixfont.com/assets/20260626-184825-gothicgumdrop-regular-img2bez-opl2uqy9.ttf

    I'm personally very interested in this as my recent font submission to Google fonts was denied not due to AI generation policies or the design of the font but rather due to outline tracing quality. If there was a way to improve the tracing so that the submission could be improved, it would be very helpful. 
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,695
    While neither outline is great, the one produced by Eli’s tool has done a better job placing on curve points at extrema, while the potrace example has long and inflected curves without any on curve points, e.g.


    My impression is that Eli’s approach to structured outlines is heading in the right direction, but still suffering in the shape fidelity department as per my test.

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