Ozymandias1972

Finally another update. I managed to figure it out after overlooking the 'crop' custom menu. It turns out the 2.39:1 anamorphic ratio is exactly what I was looking for instead of 2:1. Because it models exactly after the 1.33 anamorphic lens I have from Moment when shooting RAW which has to be edited manually. In short, I have to manually crop  the RAW version while the JPEG/TIFF images are automatically 'de-squeezed' on the Moment app instead of RAW. 

It's all good now! The image below is a screenshot showing the menu boxed in red as this was a test shot in Middlebury, Vermont. 

Finally another update. I managed to figure it out after overlooking the 'crop' custom menu. It turns out the 2.39:1 anamorphic ratio is exactly what I was looking for instead of 2:1. Because it models exactly after the 1.33 anamorphic lens I have from Moment when shooting RAW which has to be edited manually. In short, I have to manually crop  the RAW version while the JPEG/TIFF images are automatically 'de-squeezed' on the Moment app instead of RAW. 

It's all good now! The image below is a screenshot showing the menu boxed in red as this was a test shot in Middlebury, Vermont. 

Normally the factor *1.33 is placed in the „width“ field of the transform panel. And of course you need to unlock the aspect ratio (chain symbol).
 
https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/pages/Workspace/expressions.html

Don’t pay for any vector tracing apps. Despite not wanting to use Adobe being the primary reason I began using Affinity in the first place, the solution to all of this for now is very simple: get Adobe Capture. You can export shapes directly to Designer after saving to your Capture library, just hit the ellipsis menu on the image you want to export, chose SVG, and select Designer as the destination app. It’s the quickest, best vector tracing solution period. All you need is a creative cloud account. And if you really want to see Affinity add tracing to Designer get a Creative Cloud subscription and ditch Designer for Illustrator. Haha 😂🤣😂

I dont think there is any doubt that Affinity Designer should have tracing. The question is not IF but WHEN.

They cant work on everything at once, I think GPU support on Windows was a huge task on its own. People tend to see the features and forget how many complex tasks has to be done behind the scenes to make software work good. And Affinity team is in fact making fantastic job. I mean honestly - Affinity Designer is WAY smoother then so called "industry standard" Illustrator. Affinity software can save the very same content in MUCH smaller files. People usually don't see these things. And I worked on illustrator two decades daily... Why you think I started to look for alternatives? Illustrator was clunky, slow and unreliable on complex tasks crashing every now and then. Everybody who has both installed can test for himself - which software will handle more complex files. I can assure you that Illustrator will start lagging WAY before Designer. For the longest time Illustrator could handle only up to 100 artboards (doesn't really matter because was lagging after 20 anyways :D). Now supposedly can handle a up to a 1000. Designer? "Unlimited". Depends on your hardware basically.

When we say "Look, Illustrator have this!" lets remember that they had 20+ YEARS to put it there. And Adobe is lazy as hell. At one point updates to Illustrator were so minimal that new splash screen was mentioned in "whats new"... I mean.. Same for Photoshop - look at the updates there. They have added symmetry fairly recently, after over 20 years of development. Deluxe Paint had symmetry on Amiga computer in the 90's! Lets not fetishize that "industry standard" because they suck in many, many ways. Affinity team clearly is slowly but steadily building great software.

In conclusion - yes we need tracing But I have no doubt it will come at some point. And I bet that it will take less then it took Adobe to implement symmetry in Photoshop Over 20 bloody years... "Industry standard". Ehh...

Agreed, I find image trace to be excellent. It does of course depend on the quality of original image. This tool has saved my ass many times when deadlines are getting close and some lazy clients are not providing logos... a quick google search and image trace does wonders to recreate a logo.
This tool is an essential part of my workflow and I look to it arriving in Designer. 

"Image Vectorizer" (AFAIK it's only available via the Mac AppStore) is basically just an older Potrace GUI app from the Potrace author, it doesn't perform any color traces and thus only allows to set/assign manually a stroke and fill color to a trace.
The one you referenced instead is SuperVectorizer, which is one of the best tools for MacOS and much better than "ImageVectorizer". To get an idea of what common tracing/vectorizing tools are available see the following informations:
Some forum threads about bitmap tracing/vectorization:
Image Tracing in Affinity Designer? Image Trace to Vector Path Converting Pixel drawing to Vector? Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer ... and so on ... Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs:
Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac) TracedLines (commercial, Mac) Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac) DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac) Potrace (free, Win + Mac) AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac) Inkscape (free, Win + Mac) MS Expression Design 4 (win, nowadays free) Image Vectorizer (commercial, mac) Vector Magic (commercial, win + mac) Online tracing tools:
autotracer vectorizer vectorization Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free) ...etc... Online centerline supporting tracing tools:
Rapid resizer fConvert Online Vectorizer ...etc...

Or, after all these years of feature requests, they could just replicate Illustrator's Image Trace tool. We could stop this foolish journey of workarounds. Yes, it took Adobe several versions to include in Illustrator. Corel Draw had it years before Adobe. I used their raster to vector conversions in the early 1990's. Affinity has a good vector app with Designer and a good raster app with Photo. They have all the parts and knowledge needed. 

You can always use a 3rd party tracing facility…
 
I have used Serif Draw for a very long time. The trace feature has always been useful, but kind of limited and very ungainly. I am glad the developers do not intend to use it in AD. 
 
Tracing is a very useful feature and should be part of the AD package, BUT it is available elsewhere and it seems to me that other things on the Road Map and which are integral to AD are more important. Tracing can be done on another app and the vector object dropped into AD.
 
I just installed Inkscape for the tracing feature (www.inkscape.org). I don't get all the techy stuff, but as I understand it it is not a native Mac application so it needs to use another system for running in a window. That system is X11. You can install it on your Mac by going to Finder/Applications/Utilities and selecting X11. Rather confusingly this will then tell you to install XQuartz which is, I think,  a version of X11.  Either way it does the job. 
 
When you open Inkscape for the first time it asks where X11 is. Just click on the (find the application) button and go to Finder/Applications/Utilities and select XQuartz. 
 
It takes a few moments to open in its own little window.  Once open you need to import the bitmap image you want to trace from the File/Import… menu. Choose 'Embed’  and select Path/TraceBitmap. There are a bunch of options at this point (see link to tutorial below).
 
Once you have traced the bit map you can save it as an SVG file which you can open or drop into Affinity Designer. You can then ungroup it and play with its bits (if you'll pardon the expression).
 
The thing that always gets me is that when I trace a bit map, the results are often not what I expected and sometimes, what looks like a very simple shape, which I expect to turn into a vector object is anything but simple... try it and see for yourself. There is a tutorial on using the trace facility here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-Vde5TxLQ

That's probably just as easy.
I set the crop tool to a ratio of 16:9 then pulled a top corner to one side of the image, then the opposite one at the bottom to the other side (that makes the top and bottom bars equal). After cropping you get a transparent area at the top and bottom of the image, so I then applied a black matte. (Much faster to do than to describe!)

I'm probably missing the point, but the only reason you normally have a black area above and below the image is that you are looking at the image on a screen that has a different ratio. 
Actually your pics are wider than 16:9. Here's your pic with black bars above and below, which makes the whole image 16:9 ratio. Is this what you're aiming to do?

They are not scared, they just don't want to waste time implementing it badly only to turn around and replace it with something better later on.  There are too many other things they can better spend that time on while they are figuring out how to implement a version of the feature that they can be happy with.

That is an absolutely false analogy. Is using Illustrator analogous to 'using a car without a reverse' because you have to (egads!) switch to Photoshop in order to edit a raster image?
Auto-tracing is a standalone operation. You do it, and then dink around with the vector results after the fact. You don't auto-trace a raster image, go back and edit the raster image, auto-trace the image again, use other tools to edit the result, rasterize the result, auto-trace it again, ad nauseum. In other words, you don't edit the raster image or the auto-traced results while in the process of running the auto-trace.
There is nothing onerous about switching to a separate utility to run an auto-trace on a raster image, if you must. It's just like using a raster program to create a raster image to your liking, then importing that image into a 3D modeling program to map it to a 3D surface. The 3D modeling program isn't a 'car with no reverse' just because doesn't have its own self-contained raster image editing program.
By your analogy logic, I would have to say that my KTM motorcycle is useless junk because it doesn't have its own built-in pressure washer.
JET

I can understand the frustration and experienced a similar thing. However, there is a workaround and in my case scenario, I used Adobe Capture app for iOS ( on iPhone or iPad ) that you can import an image or take photos of to convert black and white images to SVG format. Export or Airdrop it back into the desktop or open the SVG export on iPad ( Designer app ) from Adobe Capture. Then save the SVG file as the new native Designer format. Just make sure the paths are visible so you can confirm the vector is converted properly. It's not perfect but it works pretty well. 

No doubt about that. I'm sure they've been considering it and hope that it'll happen. It wouldn't surprise me if they roll it out for version 2.0 as they've done a fantastic job with the three apps. Serif deserves to be supported and continue the good work. 

Let's be honest, they're probably saving auto trace, shapebuilder, and line weight tool for version 2. The guys at Serif have proved that they are excellent software developers capable of solving problems and implementing new features relatively quickly.  These are the main things keeping Designer from being a near perfect software. 
If they give us these features now, what else is there to entice us to upgrade to version 2 when it rolls around? The performance is basically perfect, all other tools are there, and it already beats Adobe Illustrator in a few ways. They already have programmed these features in the past with DrawPlus X8, so they certainly have the skills necessary to program them again.
I do not blame them for putting off these features. I sometimes grow a little worried about Affinity's business model, and if they are going to stay afloat. With such a low price and free updates, it amazes me that they can pay all of these fantastic developers. Some time along the line, they will have to raise their price and get people to buy their products again. And, if version 2 has these features, I will gladly pay $75-$100 for it, especially if it means keeping Serif afloat.
Additionally, I feel confident that they will make my $75-100 well spent. I have no doubt that they will make the auto trace and shapebuilder etc. as good as they can possibly be. Frankly, if I had the money, I would be donating to Serif. Adobe needs competition.

I'll also add my vote for Autotrace. I do use CorelDraw but felt that supporting the Affinity team with their excellent 50% off was necessary.

I want to add a link to another (recent) thread that provides a (for some working) solution to autotrace:
 
Even though I would like to see this feature eventually being part of AD (and hopefully in a superior way) this is one of the things I for now can easily get done with other solutions. So, I do not miss it at all (in AD).
d.

You can export it to Dropbox using Adobe Capture app. Or AirDrop it directly to the Mac which is what I do nowadays with this workflow. Also, the iPad version of Adobe Capture works well, too when you export black and white line art. 

There you go! That works from the iPhone as well. I usually go with SVG directly AirDropped to my Mac. Dropbox as a last resort, however. But it still gets the job done. 

Out of curiosity I just tried on my iPhone - test traced this photo from 'Photos' - any image in 'Photos' (camera roll) can be used. It can be exported as an image, SVG or PDF via CC cloud, mail, messages, AirDrop, Dropbox, Google drive, you name it.

I'm aware there is a thread that has users requesting Auto Trace feature similar to Adobe Illustrator and some have suggested the Vectorization online web app as a work around. BUT, I have also discovered another method that using Adobe Capture on iPhone or iPad will do the trick. I did an experiment and used the 'shape' tool to capture a black and white image from a book and it converted it to SVG. From there I used AirDrop ( or you can use Dropbox or such ) to transfer it to the iMac that I have. 
So I tried another method and used an illustration I did as fan art on Procreate in black and white. I imported it from Camera Roll, then captured it as SVG and then Airdropped it to my iMac to be opened on Affinity Designer. And lo and behold! It has paths! 
This is one good alternative to Vectorizer but if you have Adobe Capture, you can export it out to any device or PC after saving it to the Library instead of straight to Illustrator or Photoshop. So to fellow Affinity designers, this is a great trick I discovered so give it a try! However, I still hope Serif can implement auto trace someday in the future without having to go through hoops.
I'm attaching photos as proof. 

OK I found the way. Somehow saving directly from processed image is possible only to CCloud (also export to Illustrator and PS is available), but there is Library/Resources view which allows saving to dropbox or airdrop.
Quality of the vectorizer is not like in Illy 

There are a bunch of quite good tracing tools/apps for the desktop too, so there (on the desktop) you won't need the iPad just in order to trace some bitmaps into vectors then. You can do all on the iMac instead.

I'm aware there is a thread that has users requesting Auto Trace feature similar to Adobe Illustrator and some have suggested the Vectorization online web app as a work around. BUT, I have also discovered another method that using Adobe Capture on iPhone or iPad will do the trick. I did an experiment and used the 'shape' tool to capture a black and white image from a book and it converted it to SVG. From there I used AirDrop ( or you can use Dropbox or such ) to transfer it to the iMac that I have. 
So I tried another method and used an illustration I did as fan art on Procreate in black and white. I imported it from Camera Roll, then captured it as SVG and then Airdropped it to my iMac to be opened on Affinity Designer. And lo and behold! It has paths! 
This is one good alternative to Vectorizer but if you have Adobe Capture, you can export it out to any device or PC after saving it to the Library instead of straight to Illustrator or Photoshop. So to fellow Affinity designers, this is a great trick I discovered so give it a try! However, I still hope Serif can implement auto trace someday in the future without having to go through hoops.
I'm attaching photos as proof.