Patent US 5,715,331

A system for creating raster-vector composite images from raster images. Edges detected in the raster image are used to create a vector image. The vector image is combined with the raster image to create a composite image. Edges in the raster image can be deleted since the detail information is contained in the vector image. The composite image can be manipulated without distortion. To print or display the image, the vector image data is rasterized and merged with the raster image data.