Picture Marker Symbols in ArcGis with Vector Format

Ever wanted to add pictures as marker symbols in ArcGis? ..then you may have noticed that raster images look poor in an ArcGis map no matter how high the resolution of the input image is...

For a clean graphical representation you'll need to use images in vector format - but for generating these you need Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, etc. which may not always be at hand .

...BUT: after digging deeply into the worldwide web I found an online tool that does the job!

..works great. Upload pic in any format - convert pic online to emf-format and import this emf-file with the style manager to ArcGis and you will get a high quality result!

ps: still I was not able to achieve to yield a transparent background though the emf-picture that I used consists only of one polygon - I guess ArcGis internally makes a white background.. needless to say that with graphics ArcGis can be really lame!

pss: Another way would be to use cartographic representation markers and I found this good tutorial on the topic.. if you don't want to design your representation marker in the ArcGis-Marker Editor by hand you could use this Visual Basic-program that will convert any font or emf-based marker into a representation marker

I really wonder what these ArcGis people do (or rather miss to do) - in the end I think this would not need to be all that tedious..