I needed to find a good quality image of a Wyvern, the symbol of Wessex, ancient kingdom of the West Saxons. The best i could find was the image on the Wessex Flag, below, but it is poor quality and can't be scaled up. So i had to learn a bit about path tracing and scalable vector graphics.
Wessex Flag by Chrys Fear, found at fotw.net/flags/gb-wessx.html
I used a combination of the free open source graphics tools GIMP, Inkscape and Potrace to trace the shape into vector format. Even at the same size, it's already much better, saved here in PNG format:
The SVG is infinitely scalable and you can download it here: wessex-wyvern.svg
Here you can see the quality improvement:
Here is a close up of the eye, which took a bit of work to get the paths just right:
I needed the Wyvern to form part of the Bi Wessex flag. Here is what we are affectionately calling the Bivern!
The Bi Wessex flag is also available as SVG, should you want it: bi-wessex-flag.svg
If you need to improve the quality of an image, i hope you will feel encouraged that it is possible, with a little bit of effort and experimentation.
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