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Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs: Where * = "the more the better" 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) ** Illustrator (commercial, Win + Mac) CorelDraw (commercial, Win + Mac) MS Expression Design 4 (Win, nowadays free) OpenToonz (free, Win + Mac) Image Vectorizer (commercial, Mac) Trace (free, Win+Mac) Vector Magic (commercial, Win + Mac) *** vtracer (free, Win + Mac) * Vectorize! / Legoist (commercial, Mac) VectorStyler (commercial, Win + Mac) ...etc... Online tracing tools: autotracer vectorizer vectorizer.ai ** vectorization Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free) VTracer * Online SVG Converter (by Potrace) Svgco Svgstorm SVGConverter ...etc... Online centerline supporting tracing tools: Rapid resizer fConvert Online Vectorizer ...etc... iPad tracing tools: Adobe Capture Vector Q Vectornator Vectorize! ...etc... Some forum threads about tool based 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 Good vector tracer or vectorizer ... and so on ... See also: Awesome PNG to SVG (GitHub) Comparison of raster-to-vector conversion software (Wikipedia) ...etc...

Colors are inherently confusing because among other reasons there are so many ways they can be specified (like in CMYK, RGB, or HSL values), & there are millions of them that can be specified, not all of which actually are possible. A vectorize (tracing) function has long been requested but the staff have explained that unless/until the developers can provide some method that is better than what is available in other apps or online, it remains a very low priority. As for feathering, 'marching ants' selections can be featured feathered & there are various other ways to create feather-like effects, so I'm not sure what you want in that respect.

No (...never tried that vector-to-vector tracing so far with Inkscape), as tracing/vectorization is usually performed/done with/on pixel/raster images, so if you have some bitmap image and want to vectorize that one. Thus such tools are more commonly named as bitmap-to-vector tracers. For example I made above shown dash line in ADe and saved that as an JPG/PNG image, afterwards feeded that resulting image through SuperVectorizer which also supports center-line tracing (...as Inkscape does), in order to get single line vectors (and no outlines) out of these line dashes. - With common tracers here (aka those without any centerline-tracing support) you would only get vector outlines as a result out of these initially in ADe created dashes. Aka something (vector outlines) you don't want to have here in order to send it directly to a plotter.

That's the usual common usage and why there are the different photo & pixel editing/painting and vector design apps at all. - Tracing, aka vectorizing high resolution photos/images isn't what vectorizers/tracers are initially meant for and only very few tracing tools do reach and would fulfill some higher demands here. So high resolution photo realistic tracing is not what vectorizers are meant for! The domain of tracers is instead to vectorize simpler drawings & shapes, so everything in graphics which makes sense to have in scalable vector formats (logos, icons, banners, certain shapes and forms etc.). What will be obvious when tracing highres images are all finer color transition nuances and gradients, those will showup like posterization via upscaling. As every color nuance will be treated as an seperate shape/nodes object. File size increases can occur for such image, which do consist of a lot of different colors nuances, color transitions, among of a bunch of seperate image pixels. Since good tracing algorithms do determine all the different colors and highlightings of every pixel in an image, even things one might not determine directly just by eye wise looking. However, for other sort of graphics drawings good tracing algorithms do recognize and also optimize pixels and can smooth edged pixel lines etc. What you will get as a result here then is absolute up-/down scalable, especially in contrast to plain pixel/bitmap graphics data. For the sample texture/grunge with just a few different colorings, as shown here in this thread, a good vectorizer can still optimize it in a still good manner when used the right combining way. The result will also upscale much better and smoother than the initial pixel data and also use less of overall file size.

As that is an easy/trivial drawing, you can also manually retrace it quickly in ADe or APh with help of some of the available shapes converted to curves here. basket.afdesign Another way is to centerline vectorize the initial drawing with a bitmap-to-vector tracer which supports centerline tracing, see for example ... https://online.rapidresizer.com/tracer.php Basket-Centerline-Tracing.afdesign

I can't believe we've paid for 2 versions of Affinity Designer over the last number of years, and here I see 2.1 out hoping they finally listened to the community and included a bitmap to vector tracing tool. Nope. A technology 30 years old and existing in CorelDRAW on Windows 3.1 is still missing from a modern graphics and design suite? Even the open source community has had many solutions for almost as long as Corel and Adobe. AI tools are now being released to vectorize bitmaps. How can you call this a line art, structured graphics design tool when we can't even access vectorizing tools? Bizarre. You realize half of logo design in the industry has been done like this in Illustrator for decades, and you want to compete? Speaking of AI, Adobe is embracing it, I don't see anything new or revolutionary from Serif. One of the reasons I switched off of Adobe and to Affinity Suite years ago was because I believes in this scrappy company and they would at least listen to us. Look at the 5+ years old threads where we were begging for vector tracing tools, and we simply ignored. We still paid to upgrade to 2.0, and now I see 2.1 with really nothing big.

I'm not using image tracing in my everyday job, but I need to vectorize a bitmap from time to time. As a former Illustrator user I've usually tried that one, and recently also tried to deal with Inkscape. The type of image I use is usually flat and "technical", so I always end up preferring manual tracing, than editing the thousand nodes created by the automatic function. Maybe this is the reason I can't fully understand why people more skilled than me with drawing apps can't copy and paste an image from a dedicated tracing program to Designer. The arrogance with which some reclaim this feature sounds more like kids pretending a toy, than professionals trying to optimize their workflow. Paolo

What I am trying to do/accomplish I am trying to find a way to get a vector graphic/ curve layer from an image I made in affinity photo. If I could either use an outline as the curve/path such as tracing the outline with the vector brush or filling my selection as a vector shape that is what I am trying to figure out. What I have tried Convert to curves - This has been greyed out on the pixel layers I have been trying to convert Designer flood fill - can flood my layer or selection but doesn't allow the shape to be converted to curves Creating an outline to convert to curves Masking a vector shape. Selecting the pixels of the pixel layer and using that as a mask over a basic shape. Selecting pixels from layer and using the vector brush to fill in selection A bit more info on the shape/ pixel layer I am trying to convert. I have taken a layer of perlin noise and have a posterize adjustment layer over the top of it. I am trying to make the shapes from each layer of the posterize. I can get to selecting the different layers, filling them and adding an outline but can't find a way to make them vector shapes without a third party program to vectorize each layer. ---> This is the image that I have been working on This is just one of the layers. This is what I have been trying to convert to a curve. If there as another way to generate these same kind of patterns (I need something organic) please let me know. I was also looking at Procedural Texture from this tutorial Affinity Photo : Perlin Color effect tutorial how to - YouTube

Well Logoist is a graphics program and contains Vectorize!, the later is a standalone vectorizer and thus overall much cheaper here, so I wonder why you don't recommend that instead? Honestly there are still better ones, in recognizing detail and also in terms of correct color quantisation here. - Compare in your shown result the womans face details (eye, earing, hair color...), flowers and shrubbery details, colors ... etc. with this here ... The above is done with Vector Magic, which is still (algorithmic) one of the best tracing apps here! - It has just one little flaw (... which Logoist & Vectorize!, and most others have too here), namely that it sadly doesn't support centerline tracing, which is often needed in vectorization too.

For third party bitmap to vector tracing tools in general, see for example ... 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) vtracer (free, Win + Mac) ...etc... Online tracing tools: autotracer vectorizer vectorization Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free) VTracer Online SVG Converter (by Potrace) ...etc... Online centerline supporting tracing tools: Rapid resizer fConvert Online Vectorizer ...etc...

As I've already said and shown above it highly depends on how you do vectorize and that you have to trace color layer based combined. So ... The above grunge texture as an bitmap JPG takes ~393 KB in size. The as I've adviced tracing way generates out of that JPG as a vector result ~144 KB in size. What you tell here about tracing every single dot object then as a seperate single nodes object is inefficient and completely unnecessary for such style of textures/grunges!

I was recommending an affordable option capable of doing tracing in a very usable and productive way. 300 dollars for one trick pony is unacceptable and asking $10 monthly is why I ended up here buying Affinity instead of Adobe. Regarding the accuracy of the vector result, I was honest when I said "The manual editing after export is minimal." Acknowledging that you in fact will need to work around the result. Thanks for pointing out Vectorize! App (by the same developer of Logoist) I didn't recommend it for a reason. When using Logoist you get better results than with Vectorize! Why? I really can't answer that one, I just can tell you the results aren't that good. Remember this is a forum for resources, so if you find something you think the community should know, share it here; if it's not for you then life goes on. I thought it was good to share for the great quality and the price. Have a good one, mate.

No, you have to use as workarounds some third party vectorization/tracing apps, in order to vectorize pixel/bitmap/raster data. And from the third party app then save the vectorized data as PDF/SVG, in order to reuse/exchange that in ADe. See for some bitmap to vector tracing apps ... List of some third party vectorization & tracing tools

LOL, well you can also automatically trace/vectorize that, in case you have that template as a bitmap, instead of redrawing (manual tracing) all manually by hand, which takes then less than ~1 minute. Here's a quick trace of the portion of your screenshot without the texts, since applying own text with the Artistic Text Tool looks either way better, than some traced uneditable vector text as curves ... Or more compacted as already color merged and undivided layer curves (see the PDF & SVG files) ... Screenshot2023.afdesign Screenshot2023.pdf Screenshot2023.svg

Yes 300 bucks is a bunch and probably much too much here for casual users, even that tracer gives outstanding good results. - You need to spend some work with most tracing tools, often some pre- and post works are needed in order to get the best possible results from an individual tracing tool here. Hmm strange that they don't offer the same/similar results here, as the compony there states that it is so to say already build in there in Logoist. But maybe they enhanced or optimized it further for that graphics app. - I recall that I've once tried out Vectorize! on an iPad and that was Ok there, it did what it should. Though in the end I used instead Vector Q there. Yes it is, the more options people overall have the better, especially if things are freeware or low cost here! Here's the medal ... Medaille.afdesign Medaille_transp_background.afdesign

You can always check first before exporting/saving as SVG how the output will be generated ... ... above you can see that even one uses Affinity vector brushes, that on export it tells you that "Some areas will be rsterized". So you know that you won't get a plain SVG vectors presentation of the drawn strokes. Otherwise it would tell you instead that ... "Nothing will be rasterized"! - One can also open/look with a plain text editor into the generated SVG file in order to see if all are defined SVG vectors, or if some base64 uuencoded image data is enclosed in the SVG file. It's sadly as N.P.M. already told here, for Affinity vector brushes. In case of getting real/plain vectors here, I would probably vectorize/trace the individual drawn lines in order to get real/plain vectors out of those (see therefor the above shown link to some third party tracing tools).

There are mostly manual ways used/shown of how to vectorize and apply (mesh) gradients ... How to Convert Raster Gradient Color Image to Vector Gradient Tracing an Object Using Gradient Mesh in Illustrator CS6/CC Vectors and Color Gradients Vector Conversion Options - Color Blends https://www.behance.net/gallery/27801175/Vectorization-Gradient-Mesh-vs-Auto-Trace?locale=de_DE ... and so on ... For via autotracing applied gradients there were some research in this imaging domain ... Image Vectorization using Optimized Gradient Meshes https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/27764/1/ImageVectorization.pdf https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Yukun.Lai/papers/sig09gradmesh.pdf ... etc. ... but none of the tracing apps I tend to use/know does support this yet. The online service ImageVectorizer doesn partly deal with gradients, but it's still AFAIK under development for gradient handling ... FAQ: How to add color gradients?

For vectorization either vectorize/retrace it manually, or using some third party bitmap to vector tracing tools. See for example ... 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... Here on the forum itself ... Delineate - A raster to SVG converter

@anon2126 You can vectorize those pixel image layer text portions. Remove the gradient & let the outline be dark black colored for both layers, then export those text image layers as a JPG (ideally with a white doc background for better autotracer recognition). Afterwards vectorize the exported JPG images via "centerline" tracing, for example with one of these online services ... Rapid resizer fConvert Online Vectorizer ... now the result should be vectors (PDF or SVG). Load/open the PDF/SVG into APh, adjust them to your needs & apply a gradient fill!

Just use a common external bitmap-to-vector vectorization/tracing tool for such purposes, there are a bunch of such tools available as stand alone apps and also as free usable net services! - Dependent on what you need here, check if the tool of your choice performs also color tracing or just b&w. Further if it supports color tracing, that you can limit the number of traced colors it produces, since the less colors the more clipart style or cartoonish it will look then. So there are a bunch of third party tools, which can be used as workarounds for such demands ... 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...

@TKLarsen I've forgotten to name another interesting, Rust lang based, tracing tool. VTracer (cmd app and sources on github) VTracer (Web app online tryout here) VTracer tech article Further a general good overview & reference about a bunch Tracing tools (commercial & freeware etc.) can also be seen here: Awesome PNG to SVG In order to get a download version of Intaglio Vectorize (Mac), try this link: Download Intaglio Vectorize (64 Bit) Other two interesting tools for Mac users in this area might be ... Primitive (for MacOS) Geometrize

For vectorization either vectorize/retrace it manually, or using some third party bitmap to vector tracing tools. See for example ... 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...

ADe 2 has no autotracer build in, in order to trace and vectorize an image you have to use third party tools as workarounds. With a third party tracer save the vectorized result as PDF/SVG and open or import that one into ADe 2 then. See related ... List of some third party vectorization & tracing tools

Well, exporting a bitmap image (PNG) as an SVG will give you as a result just a SVG file with an base64 uuencoded embedded bitmap/raster image, so no vector curves at all here for the initial bitmap image. In order to get what you are after, aka a vectorization of a PNG image, you would need to use first some third party bitmap-to-vector vectorization tool, since Affinity doesn't have any build-in and afterwards (re)import the vectorized bitmap image (the SVG/PDF vector version of your PNG) into an Affinity app. So you have to perform a "PNG to SVG/PDF" (bitmap to vector) conversion with some third party tool first. Some common available online tracers/vectorizers for quick turn arounds are for example ... VTracer (offers B&W or color tracing) Online SVG Converter Potrace online Autotracer.org vectorizer Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free) ... etc. Online centerline supporting tracing tools: Rapid resizer fConvert Online Vectorizer ...etc.

The good news: Intaglio 3.9.5 and the Vectorize plugin run on Catalina. The tracing feature is rather rudimentary but better than nothing.