frankielovespattern

Thanks Str2 for the pointer re: image vectoriser. £3.99 and it's a brilliant piece of kit - you get so much control over the tracing process. Highly recommend this for anyone looking for a way of tracing without involving illustrator.

The Live Trace 'look' seems to have become an actual style in surface design and illustration circles. I started out spending ages trying to smooth my traced and scanned designs but now see lots of stuff that has lots of raggedy edges on it so it seems that buyers are ok with it and it's really just us geeks that want perfect curves! A lot of buyers for fabric designs will not go near anything that isn't vector based so the ability to do more than just smooth lines.
   
i need to remain versatile style wise and so for now I will have to keep my old version of illustrator running alongside designer until such time i can create scatter brushes, vector based textures and pattern swatches in designer.  I really hope you consider adding these features in the future as I am enjoying working in Designer WAY more than Illustrator.
 
Thanks
Frankie
https://www.instagram.com/frankie_van_mourik/

Hello there,
could someone tell me please, is there the facility to create repeat pattern swatches?
 
Also is it possible to create a scatter brush?
 
Thanks in advance - i'm finding the software is fantastic by the way!
 

Add me also as one requesting a vector pattern feature in Designer.
 
This and being able to expand a stroke into a usable amount of anchor points would be the first two features I'd ask for.

Live trace is the one thing that is keeping me in Illustrator. That and the line width tool, though live trace is more important. I illustrate educational materials for children, and live trace enables me to convert a small-ish simple line illustration into something that can be used on a poster, in seconds. No trace, no deal! I am very much looking forward to being able to jump ship over to Affinity.

Some lean apps for live tracing exist, from the same dev who created the code Inkscape uses (Potrace): http://image-vectorizer.com
 
The software is usually GPL licensed, but the dev offers licensing for commercial software too. The Affinity team could contact him if they don't want to develop the code themselves. http://www.icosasoft.ca

I use Inkscape's built-in bitmap trace. Works really well for black and white line art conversions. Save as SVG, and import into Affinity.

Live tracing is really neccessary if you want to maintain the look of analog hand lettering and logos. Here you can see how it's used and the workflow from paper to digital: 
 
youtube.com/watch?v=vlsaI3f0JYc
 
Like you can see in the vid, having advanced settings to adjust the tracing threshold is key for good results.
 
Hand lettering is going strong on sites like Instagram, having this feature would make Affinity attractive to a big chunk of people.

Why would you ever have to buy the program if a new demo download would work again?
 
Think about that man.

Well said Newbie, I currently still use Freehand for most things & I also use Illustrator cc which I hate with a passion except the Live trace. Freehand's trace was never any good. Affinity looks good to me so far but untill they put in Pantone colors it's useless to me. The demo is also now useless as it's expired & if I download another one it's also immediately expired.

I think many of the posts here miss the way live trace is used mostly today - what's needed is a replacement for Illustrator's Live Trace tool. You'd never want to use this for photos as firstly illustrator isn't for this, and secondly if you want that effect you'd be better off using photoshop (posterise tool etc). The Live Trace tool is either likely to be used for tracing previous artwork when neither the vector file nor a lot of time is available. Secondly, and probably the biggest reason why Affinity NEEDS to include this tool, is for illustrators and designers scanning in their artwork. This includes people like my wife who illustrates childrens books, and all the designers out there doing hand drawn lettering, elements etc. We know that is almost everyone at the moment, and I'm really shocked this isn't seen as a bigger need. Until Affinity has a live trace feature I will still need Illustrator and I don't want to be using two programs. I'd rather jump ship when it can be a replacement, and that certainly isn't yet. 

I’d also like to see brushes based on vector shapes in AD. 
 
I heavily used Illustrator’s art brush in order to draw the fur in the following image: http://fav.me/d55689p
Although this could be done with pressure profiles, it wouldn’t feel as intuitive.
The texture in the background was also created with an art brush.
 
Yes, it’s not a hyper-important request, but I just prefer working with vector-only files. :rolleyes:  ;)

I regularly created and applied vector shapes / brushes to a path in my illustrations back in Freehand days. Gives more control of the shape than just using freehand vector brushes.