Before I start, if this is in the wrong section please just move it, I always get confused which section to put things in so I assumed this is pretty general.

Hello,

As the title states, I need help converting a raster image (a jpg to be more precise) into a vector image file that I would be able to resize in Adobe Illustrator so I don't lose any of its quality. I'm making a map of Los Angeles and I want it to be very realistic, so I did a lot of conversions with GIS imagery to find accurate and real height maps of the Los Angeles area - the only problem is that they are very low resolution and I need them to be about 11-22x the size that they are now. There is an obvious flaw in this - when I put the scaled image into world painter to make the map it will be extremely distorted and unrealistic. I figure that if I can make the image into a vector then convert it back to raster once I have it resized, it will lose less quality when I import it to world painter.

The next problem I have with this however is, I don't have the time or patience to convert the image myself into a vector by tracing it with the pen tool, but the programs I can find to do it automatically either have pretty large flaws, like leaving giant white gaps in the output file, or don't support the usage of 256 grey shades that I need, leaving out lots of key detail.

So, is there any program that anyone knows of that convert my raster image into a vector without loosing to much quality?

Thanks in advance,
nammerbom