Freebie vector app- Inkscape.

[Darren Null]

They say it's "not quite ready to take on Illustrator", but what the heck...it's free. Here's the blurb:
http://www.inkscape.org/

About Inkscape
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

[Dan Hintz]

It's amusing how often this one pops up... I'd say about once a month, maybe once every other. It's a great program, and I would venture to say it does a darn fine job at stacking up against Illustrator. My other favorite for raster graphics is Paint.Net, originally designed as a replacement for Microsoft's Paint, but after MS stopped funding the semester-long project the students kept on designing more features... I'd say it matches up fairly well these days with PhotoShop's capabilities.

[Darren Null]

I stumbled across it in a vector-related search yesterday. I shouldn't be too surprised that others have too.
I'm downloading it now because I want to see how the trace feature compares with the other vector apps. Also the 'old-style engraving cross-hatching' thingy looks worth a go too.

For raster, The Gimp isn't quite a photoshop killer, but it's not far off at all.
http://www.gimp.org/

[Darren Null]

I like the trace facility in Inkscape. It's black and white, which is ideal for us lasering types. First impressions would seem to give Inkscape a quite large edge over both corel and illustrator for a black and white end trace.
Up till now, I've been using illustrator; knocking back the colours; and then manually weeding out the last few colours.
Inkscape gets you a superior end product without the brain-damage. I'm impressed.

ADDENDUM: I am having problems exporting from Inkscape in a form that Corel can cope with. It doesn't like the inkscape .svg, .eps, .emf. It'll cope with .png, but importing a bitmap kind of nullifies the point of using inkscape's trace. Which makes illustrator's look shoddy and leaves corel's standing.

[Dan Hintz]

Corel should have no problem with eps format.

[Darren Null]

Got it going now. In EPS and SVG (plain vanilla version...there's a vanilla and an inkscape variety). I originally had inkscape set to "Suck the picture dry", but I traced it a little less ferociously and with a somewhat smaller version of the image and corel accepted it this time. Maybe there's an upper limit to the number of paths corel is prepared to cope with in a vector.

Escher-Circle-Limit-IV.jpg was the file I traced...for obvious reasons it makes an excellent test image for tracing. angelsanddemons.svg was the result. There is more detail that can be got out of the image, but there was a light source off to one side when the photo was taken, and if you raise the threshold much more the image darkens along one side.
Attached is a screenshot of the trace on silly settings, but corel won't accept the file, whatever format it's in. Hmmph.

I am impressed with the inkscape trace though...corel looks like a cartoon next to it.