Hello. 

Since my brain is in overload due to trying to get normal results in Illustrator, I just gave up and started looking for other options. I have over 1000 cat mandalas and later I will have dog and all. I have them in 300 dpi PNG but the edges do not look good enough for print so I want to trace them all into SVG to get cleaner lines. 

No matter what setting I pick in Illustrator, it either gives me partial white interior, all black or extra white, and always not in the dimensions of artboard or fit artboard to artwork, never what I need. In Inkscape it does it normally so I am hoping there is a way to automate it.

I find there is something called POTrace but I have no idea how to get it to work and run on my files. 

How do I auto trace PNGs into SVG file?

Any help is appreciated. 

Windows 10 PC

Inkscape 1.1

 

For tracing bitmaps with Inkscape - https://inkscape.org/doc/tutorials/tracing/tutorial-tracing.html

Inkscape uses potrace to trace.

You can use potrace on it's own http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ details here.

There are in fact links to lots examples of different usages at the bottom of the page, including articles about real world usage for embroidery patterns etc.

In Ubuntu for example with Imagemagick installed, your mandala can be easily converted with: 

convert 2_3us3Zvb.png bmp:- | potrace -b svg > out.svg

However, it's very likely all of these image come from svg or eps in first place, so why not try to obtain the original files ? 

Just in case it matters: your example PNG will come out fine (one single color+transparency background)  with the default settings of "Trace Bitmap" (Single Scan/Brightness cutoff/Brightness threshold0,45 etc).

How to use this via CLI escapes me.