G00SE

After getting over the initial frustration over the lack of that feature, I softened up a bit and changed my perspective. Just purchased the software and started using it.
 
And, Wow! I am truly humbled. This software is profound. Next generation of vector drawing. Bravo developers. Work on what ever features you want. Thank you for this truly amazing software.
 
I feel rather silly to have such a tremendous change of heart, but I was just ignorantly griping about one feature. Using the software is very fluid. I am seriously impressed.

After getting over the initial frustration over the lack of that feature, I softened up a bit and changed my perspective. Just purchased the software and started using it.
 
And, Wow! I am truly humbled. This software is profound. Next generation of vector drawing. Bravo developers. Work on what ever features you want. Thank you for this truly amazing software.
 
I feel rather silly to have such a tremendous change of heart, but I was just ignorantly griping about one feature. Using the software is very fluid. I am seriously impressed.

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.

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.

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

The ability to bring in a raster image and trace into vector would be a good feature. This is something I often use in Illustrator and would love to see in Affinity, ideally with more control. 
 
While switching tools between personas is great, only being able to rasterize a vector and not the reverse is troublesome. 

Here are some images that I would try to trace.
Sometimes I prefer the "rough sketch" look and not the clean Bezier look.

I too am a fan of live tracing and I use it for vectorising my hand lettering as well as my watercolours and textures that I create. All quite different types of tracing. 
 
For hand lettering I usually like the slight irregularity and texture that comes out nicely in print, so I often set the path fitting to 0.8. I also only add a hint of blur, about 0.7. For this reason I've held on to an old version of Illustrator (CS 5) which allowed for values under 1. In newer versions you can't get this beautiful reproduction. 
 
Watercolours are a different cup of tea though. For me it's important with the colour, but I can welcome some happy accidents when I trace that kind of work. 
 
The next area is textures where I like to either scan ink, crumpled paper or grain, or create the texture digitally and then vectorise it and use it as a pattern fill or as a texture in parts of my work. The advantage of being able to scale vector work pairs well with using scalable textures, especially for print. 
 
If Affinity had the ability for precise control that has been lost in Illustrator, I think it could be a feature that would win over a lot of people who do hand lettering and other art forms that requires this feature. :) 
 
I would be wonderful to be able to trace your artwork with Affinity. 

I use illustrators Live trace to create abstract images from multiple auto traces of the same image with variation changes to the settings - the final result is interesting, experimental and never looks like an auto traced image.
 
If I do a sketch and auto trace it I use the line envelope and width tools with maybe the roughen filter set set below .9 to add digital noise to the stoke - auto trace is just a starting point.

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.