alisonmmiller

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

Auto trace needs to be much better than what Drawplus offers. There is no way to reduce the number of nodes (thousands!!!) detected. Affinity developers need to check how Illustrator does this (amazing results in converting raster to vector, especially the "Simple" & "Ignore White" options)! If Affinity Designer could do this, they could really move new and existing Adobe customers to this platform!

I checked the Common Feature Request topic, and I searched requests on this feature. I thought there was originally a topic on this, but I guess not. I saw there were people asking for help on this, but it wasn't actually a request.
 
A vector flood tool is one of the two things I really hope comes to Affinity Designer. Similar to the live paint bucket tool in Illustrator, fills can be added to overlapping regions. And afterwards, making changes to the stroke will update the fills as well. Compared to programs like Inkscape or CorelDraw, the fills have to be edited separately. However, Illustrator's live paint tools are pretty limited. It does not allow brush strokes, line profiling, feathering, and it groups all the paths together forcing users to use the group selection tool. If this feature is added to Designer, maybe they could use the approach of Anime Studio? The flood fills work the same as Illustrator's live paint, but nothing is grouped. It automatically detects the regions for future manipulation. It makes things easier to change outlines than to update the fill as well.
 
What do you think?

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.

Posted 09 October 2015 - 10:56 PM
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. 
    Me too here! When Affinity can trace I will buy, until then Ill keep using Illustrator and hold off on my el capitan upgrade…..Affinity we are waiting, Thanks for your work, J

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. 

So Ill Ask the Question... Is and Image Trace, Live Trace, call it what you will, …The ability for us to bring in a jpg for instance, and have AD convert it to a vector image feature in the works? Is it at least being talked about, actively thought about, in development, coming soon, or hold on it will be in the next update. What is its status if any?
Thanks