have a problem but could be I want the impossible: I want to trace a pic of mine so I can save it as a vector format pic, that way I can resize a pic to larger proportions without loosing quality. want to print some pictures on huge sizes but rendering on huge sizes takes too much time, if you have some suggestions how I can do it tell me please.... it could be I will have to do it the hard way but when there is an alternative in stead of rendering on 3000 X 4000 I would like to do it an easy way if there is one wozz

I haven't done this in years, but think as long as you have the picture scanned in, there are programs that will convert it to a vector graphic and I think Photoshop is one of them. I don't recall the procedure so you might ask on the photoshop forum.

There is software (Adobe makes one, I can't remember it's name) that will auto-trace a simple black and white line drawing, but not continuous tone images. Alternately, the magnetic pen tool in photoshop does a mediocre job of tracing. Unfortunately, with continuous tone renders like from Bryce, I think you're stuck doing it the hard way. I'd also guess that it would be faster to render than to trace. If you insist on tracing, I'd start with lots of render masks and select them in Photoshop and convert the selections to paths. It may save a little time. There is also a Photoshop plugin called Genuine Fractals which promises to upsample raster images with minimal quality loss, but I've found that it makes little or no difference with Photoshop 5.5 and higher (never tried with lower versions). I frequently upsample images in Photoshop and get acceptable results in print -- especially ink jet and dye-sub prints -- without Genuine Fractals.

Oh, I forgot. Whenever you auto-trace, or convert a selection to a path, the software tends to use far more points that are required so the paths are a real bear to edit.

If you have access to Flash it has a trace bmp option which will convert a raster image to a vector. Then it can be saved as EPS and resized in Illustrator. Does a really nice job of preserving the quality too.