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I was doing some research today, looking for a low cost or free solution to create vector files from png & jpg files on the latest Mac OS, and one that works with Designer. I thought I'd share my results, as some of the most recent recommendations I could find on this seem to be a little out of date. I've especially seen this list a few places, but a few of the options there seem to be obsolete now: I should probably mention I'm using a Mac on Monterey (12.2.1). I will not be using this to make vector paintings out of photos or anything like that. I occasionally need to convert clients' logos from whatever low-res png or jpeg they have available to vector, that's my main use case. I also sometimes need to convert hand drawn sketches. I tested using a 250x250px and a 500x500px version of this logo, designed to have lots of thin pointy bits that tracing software has a hard time with: What didn't work for me (Obsolete, couldn't download, too expensive, etc): Potrace - An old script? command line tool that many other software apps seem to use. I'm pretty good with geeky stuff, but using command line to do this was a bit over my head without help, and the links to tutorials that I tried on their page are defunct now. DragPotrace - downloaded from the Japanese page linked. Even though the MacOS version they offer is from 8/2021, my OS wouldn't let me install it. Intaglio Vectorize - I wish I could try it, but the developer seems to have closed up shop. The links provided elsewhere here take you to a site with the correct name, but I couldn't get to any kind of software info or download screen. Just a bunch of blog posts. Super Vectorizer - Chrome wouldn't allow me to download the free trial (came up with a security warning of some sort), so nope. Autotrace - no updates on that page since 2004. I didn't see enough info to make me want to try it. Vector Magic - downloaded and used their trial successfully. It looks great! But it's too expensive for my needs, and the free version doesn't give you anything usable (understandable, of course). Honorable mentions: Photopea.com (free) - I wasn't too interested in the online converters. I didn't want to create an account for something I would only use occasionally, and I don't want to go uploading my clients' logos to a bunch of websites without figuring out terms and how they would store them. That said, Photopea looked promising so I tried a test logo. The results were pretty poor with the low res photo, high-res was ok. Couldn't copy and paste into Designer, but exporting as svg brought the nodes in for me. Possibly worth a try if your project doesn't have a bunch of text with small lines? Vectornator (free) - I really wanted this to work, but the trace results were pretty terrible on the low-res version, and not too great on the high-res version of my test logo. Copying and pasting just brought the image into designer, no nodes. That said, it did work and it may have done a better job with something like a photo or a graphic without text or thin lines. It's also free and has lots of other features, so maybe worth a try? What did work: Inkscape for Mac (free) - I've tried the Inkscape route before, and ended up with a bunch of files (including XQuartz) on my machine and not much to show for it (couldn't get tracing to work well for me). So I hesitated to use it. But there's a new version with an actual mac installer. I tried the trace bitmap feature, and after playing with the many options I produced pretty good results from the low res logo using multiple scans and the Grays option. Couldn't get it to copy and paste into Designer. The svg I exported opened strangely, but with nodes available in Designer. Results from Low-res logo: Image Vectorizer ($4.99) - I really hesitated with this one. It's an old app, the website's copyright goes to 2015, and it hasn't been updated in the app store for 6 years. But I saw lots of good mentions here on the forum, so I thought I'd try it. It worked! Quick and easy, 2.5 MB (super lightweight), and no problems running in Monterey so far. The higher-res logo looked pretty great on the default settings. Low-res results would take some tweaking in the settings and maybe in Designer. And there's a copy to clipboard button that allows you to paste into Designer, nodes and all. Works great! Worth the $5. Results from high-res logo: Bottom-line: Neither solution is perfect, so I'll still be very happy when Serif is ready to unleash their version on the world! Image Vectorizer is fast and easy to use and does a solid job. Inkscape does a much better job, but it's a slower process that involves some playing around to get things looking well. So for now, I'll probably use Image Vectorizer whenever possible for ease of use, and pull out Inkscape when an image is more challenging. Hope all this craziness helps someone!

I made a quick update to my avatar since I recently shaved. I drew the image in Medibang, traced the image in Inkscape and then cut apart and colored in Designer. This is my go-to process for illustration work.

Hi all, I am collaborating with a friend, but he only has access to Inkscape. All the layers in the affinity export are groups, but don't show up in the Inkscape layers panel, which really is a bummer. Anyone have any experience in exporting Affinity designs to be readable in Inkscape in a usable manner?

Posted on reddit a while ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/AffinityDesigner/comments/du0ejg/evenly_subdividesplit_a_path/ Inkscape (and blender, while we're at it) seems to be the only vector program that has something IMO is so simple and commonly used (atleast by me, and blender users). The ability to subdivide an object/selections nodes, placing new ones perfectly spaced apart. It's one of a few things holding me back from using affinity. Additionally, vice versa: Simplify/decimate. Remove all unnecessary nodes but keep the overall shape (some distortion is to be expected, but it usually does a really good job) Attached, or on the reddit post, is an example gif using inkscape

Hi, I'm a rookie and I've come from using Inkscape. I've found that opening inkscapes .svg files doesn't always load correctly in Af Designer due to the differences in how they save/read files (I think) i've got a load of .svg files id like to convert so they work as they should in Affinity so I can uninstall Inkscape. I thought it would be to save as plain .svg and then load in affinity designer but it didn't load properly. I tried searching but didn't find many definite answers on this, I just want to know which is the best format to save in out of these to then load in Designer and then save in the .afdesign format? I've attached an image of all the formats Inkscape lets to save in. Thanks and sorry if this has been covered already.

I use Inkscape with Affinity Design to get the functionality that Affinity Designer needs to improve/add (such as better expand stroke, dxf import export). When I copy and paste any graphic element from Affinity Designer to Inkscape it's scaled up by a factor of 3.125 and vice versa. Is there any way to avoid this scaling between this two programs?

Hi, Usually I can copy and paste from inkScape without any problem. But today I opened a PDF made with Illustrator in inkScape (to convert fonts to curves), and tried to paste it in AD. Problem: the objects are pasted at the right position, but some have a clipped path (and Illustrator add them to a lot of elements), and those pathes aren't at the right position, but somewhere in the top left corner of the page. At first glance, it seem 3/4 of the map is missing. I need to hide/delete the clipping pathes to get back the elements. (I can't share the PDF file on this forum.)

Hey, could we please get and extensions tap similar to Inkscape's. Not havings things like a wireframe sphere have been a real pain in the but, also the ability to generate a Voronoi diagram from paths would make creating polygonal backgrounds a lot easier and quicker. I really hope you add these things considering Inkscape (a free program) has them. PLEASE!

Good morning or good evening, I allow myself to create this topic to start a discussion about the possibility of adding a new export format in Affinity Designer. More precisely the ".sif" format. This format is used for the Synfig software and allows to import complete vector scenes in our projects. Currently, if we export in .svg in Affinity Designer and import it as is in Synfig, elements are not recognized and do not matter. The only method I found for this problem at the moment is to export the .svg file from Affinity Designer, then import it into Inkscape and re-export it as an .sif file. Because yes Inkscape integrates the .sif format as an export model and works perfectly. But hey, this manipulation is not the cleanest it is I must say. Can this be integrated with Affinity Designer ? Or failing that can we create, we users, addons/plugins/plugins that would be embeddable in Affinity Designer and who could do this work ? In advance, thank you for your answers. Regards, Mr Nazarick

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So, I use Inkscape before and there is this feature called "interpolate". What this feature does is that you can create a set of new object from 2 object. So, for instance, I have 2 rectangle. One is white, and one is pink. If I interpolate both I will get a set of rectangle with color slowly moving from pink to white. This feature is not limited to only color but also to shapes. This feature is great for gradient simulation and simple animation. I know that this isn't basic and thus will be worked later but I really wish that Affinity Team will consider this and apply this feature someday.

Have just purchased a license for Win (works faster in a VM than Mac). Looks promising, thank you for that. Too bad no Linux support in your plans. Some suggestions, if I may. (01) Open file -> preview (01.b) Resize preview area (02) Simpler vector manipulations; now there are: (a) pen, (b) pencil, (c) brush, (d) node, (e) corner - i.e. Five (five!) different tools to do something that could be done with just two - (A) free hand (B) node editor. THAT could have been some major usability improvement. It takes more time to switch between these FIVE than to actually accomplish the task(s); I still could not find a way to join/cut nodes in less than 1 second. Lacking 18 years of practice, perhaps. Escape or double click to join the nodes while in the (d) node editor? That is a well tuned joke, is it not? Esc is being used as cancel, and double clicking within the space of a node rectangle on a 2560 x 1440px workspace might be a good exercise for those with "all the time in the World" at their hands. But you are publishing your product as if you are targeting professionals, are you not? We only have that much of our time. I have even purchased a MX speed gaming keyboard to get a 40% faster click per each key press, to save my time and do more. You want me to double click instead of single click for a node join operation? 1000+ times a day? Seriously? Why not just let the nodes join when these two ends simply meet plus the Shift key, for example? I.e. the respective coordinates if their rectangles are literally joined. I am doing roughly 1000 joins per day during a full creative day. Manually. It is impossible to do it with these ludicrous key combinations. I have tried. Escape and double click AND move to join afterwards? No join in the right click menu with two end nodes selected? Thankfully, there is the only way which is to add a key combination to join and break curves in the the node menu. Paired with the Wacom EK Remote, it becomes usable. Meaning the whole Product starts to make sense for a hardcore daily use. (02.a,b) what is the difference between the (a) pen and (b) pencil please? Yes I understand that "pen" is a free hand node editor whereas "pencil" is a free hand drawing tool in Affinity Designer. But it does not make sense, if any. The real question is - why have you made 2 different tools? It is confusing that (b) pencil may be used for a free hand drawing and (a) pen cannot. It also is not clear why did you need to over complicate things with 5 (five) tools instead of making versatile 2 (TWO) tools only - (A) free hand and (B) node editor. For example, you get (A) free hand the very moment a light/pro pen/mouse/finger touches the drawing surface to basically draw AND you get the (B) node editor when you are using eraser / hit edit button; Just use the node editor to cut/join/move/reshape/create new nodes/delete old ones. (02.c) Why do we need a separate (c) brush tool if it does not react to Wacom Pro Pen pressure levels? Why cannot you just change the size/pattern of the pen/pencil (A free hand) and get the brush functionality in it? Add pressure level recognition to the (A) free hand and you get the "real" brush! Just change the size/pattern of it in the stroke/brushes and that is it. (02.d,e) Why do you or anybody would need two separate (d) node and (e) corner instead of having just one (B) Node editor tool? Neither (d) node nor (e) corner cannot join nodes even with both objects selected even with holding Shift/Ctrl keys together or separately, I have even tried Alt as well. Neither could I cut the joints with either of these tools. I have tried right clicking as well. Maybe it was easier/cheaper to develop it this way, but it makes no sense from the user standpoint. It is NOT intuitive. It is anti-human. It is not usable. It is an anti-thesis of Usability. Yes, Adobe Ai is anti-human, too. It is not intuitive. It is not usable, contrary to the popular belief. And I cannot have it, legally. I mean I cannot install it without internet access. I cannot download it. I cannot reuse it offline after OS reinstall. If you want to sell your tool, the Software, your Product, it should be intuitive; a five year old should be able to use it, but the poor me with 18+ years exclusive vector experience AND patience need to guess how does this work for hours, use Google and Youtube and Vimeo search. I cannot use (d) node to create new nodes neither, I have to use (a) pen tool instead; and even then I cannot create a new node which will be an extension/addition of/to the selected node. Making hard copy manual a hundreds pages tome to show how does it work makes no sense. There should be NO NEED FOR A MANUAL, it should be intuitive. I understand that your business model is targeting profits from selling the manual. Well, your software costs USD 50, Manual USD 54 (no choice of delivery other than standard 5-7 business days). In this fast paced World who will be waiting for 5-7 business days before they will be able to use your commercial product which is unusable otherwise? Seriously? Why not offer DHL Express as an option? Why no digital download option? Yes I want to buy digital version of the manual because obviously - it is cheaper, it is faster, it is less weight and no paper management. Paper books are becoming a hard earned New World luxury. Solution? "Simple" but not easy. Price your tool, the Software, at USD 104 BUT MAKE IT (02.1) INTUITIVE and (02.2) include the manual in PDF download and (02.3) make 1 license per email for all three versions (Linux, Mac, Windows). At this day and age everyone can print anything within 24h, online, with international delivery and/or DHL Express:FedEx/Whatever and/or at home/office. Spare the forest, Gentlemen. How to make it intuitive? Please read the above points again and find a/the five year old/s and teach him/her/them vector drawing with your tool. I do realize that you are facing the legal problem(s) of not being able to hire five year olds for testing as for the tester role and you may be running out of available friends with five year old kids, then you may try first graders by providing vector drawing lessons in their public schools. By doing that you will acquire life long customers. How do I know? Believe it or not, I once was a pupil 18+ years ago. Adobe Illustrator was one of the most complicated tools that I remember. Nothing has changed since then in this regard. It did not make sense to use Ai back then, and it still does not. Same with Corel Draw. (Mind the price). So I was using the fastest vector designing tool in the World. And I was using it even after it was sold to a third party (Magix AG). I have been using it for over 18 years. Daily. And I am only writing this to you free of charge now because I can feel that there are the same people behind Affinity Designer as they were behind that fastest vector designer tool in the World. Behind the you-know-that-name tool, which is still the fastest in the World. I am spending my otherwise paid time to help you develop a better product because (R1) I once was that young person willing to learn vectors design and because (R2) I care about the younger versions of myself - passionate designers, who want to dedicate their tome to vector design and succeed with it. I also trust my feelings and I believe that this Affinity Team may build if not the fastest vector designing tool in the World, but the most intuitive one with the world class usability, which is not found anywhere else. Yes, Adobe Ai is a multi million dollar crap. Nothing personal, Adobe. Whether you would want to listen to this advice or just skip it is up to you. Skipping is faster, cheaper and easier. I have specifically posted it on an online forum (which is yours) so that you at least would not be able to ignore it. To survive current competition with Adobe, you need to do what they can't. That is: precision, user-centered simplicity/usability with low learning curve. Sounds simple, right? Then you will not need to survive, you will thrive. Due to their approach to their own users base, Magix's days are being counted (at least as with their professional audience), that is why I am here among many others - on the market. Corel Draw makes no sense. At their price. Still. Inkscape is too amateurish and is lacking precision, even though it is the only viable vectors editing possibility for Linux. Adobe Ai is over bloated, over complicated with no software ownership by a user. Other than that, they are great. For people working on the new proprietary projects which are and/or will soon become new IP registrations, having proprietary software running behind hardware firewalls is crucially important. I wish and hope that Affinity Designer will become that tool and will thrive. That is my New Hope. (03) When the new document's units are set to px, fonts/lines are expected to be in px as well [but these are still in pt, why is that?] why not let the user decide for all three while creating a new file? (Now it is only in the Preferences -> User Interface -> Show Lines in points, Show Text in points, regardless of what is set in the new file being created) (03.b) Save the objects/line/text units in the file, i.e. Document Settings (04) show 0px line as a 1px retina line (1/4th / ultra-thin) with applicable color to make it still visible but distinguishable from 0.1px/0.1pt line (04.b) currently there is no visual difference between 0.1pt and 0.1px lines, as one would expect 0.1pt line to be slightly thicker than the 0.1px one - like you do it in the Outline mode (04.c) make possible to set a keyboard shortcut for the outline mode AND for the Vector mode to be able to switch between the vector/outline to see what is what within ms of time (05) do NOT automatically change Line/object color (settings [checkbox]) which was previously set by a user - the same settings should be used as set by the user with a previous object (06) Show on the bottom the colors used in the current file as a one line of palette/swatches; (06.b) Save these colors in the file, show the same palette/swatches on the file load; sort by hex value or by time stamp of having being added by the user; (06.c) Allow to delete unused colors (setting[checkbox]) (07) Multiple object per layer (group = layer, SVG) (08) Multiple pages per file (09) Status on the bottom (09.a) selected nn object name(s) [rectangle, circle, star, group] (09.b) what has just happened (10) Three dimensional (3d) Mould tool [vector, raster] (11) Unlimited undo history [from the beginning of creation of the edited file] (11.b) Save undo history to file (settings[checkbox]) (12) Open/Edit/save template (13) Assets are great. How do I create my own assets? (13.b) Proprietary, with a possibility to be shared within a company (proprietary[checkbox].checked=true) (13.c) Publishable, with downloads/voting on your website - should not be too easy to publish to avoid accidental publishing of the proprietary assets (proprietary[checkbox].checked=false) (14) GPU / VRAM acceleration? I mean, I have a quad core i7 6700HQ 64GB DDR4 with NVIDIA GeForce 980m 4GB running on Samsung 950 Pro and need to wait (wait, wait?) while a vector 1pager will load and show up? I do realize that quad core i7 6700HQ is outdated (when you may get a 18 core iMac Pro with 128GB ECC this autumn) and DDR4 SDRAM is worse than ECC but waiting? Seriously? Come on... (15) While pasting the license code in Win version with Ctrl+V it only pastes into the first field which is 4 symbols long; the button "paste" is great, but the user has to make a separate mouse/pen move for this which is OK but Ctrl+V is much more intuitive and faster (Command/Ctrl+X/C/V combination is in human mind and muscles memory since QWERTY personal computing in 1983 / Apple Lisa) (16) The top menu when folding down should be left aligned NOT right aligned. Why? (16.a) Because people born in this part of the world were tuned to read from left to right, and the menu items should be positioned the same way in a single visual column - left to right, which also minimizes mouse movements to navigate within the menu. (16.b) When you want to make it better for your Israeli and Arab (right to left) users, you may want to keep it the same way AND to make the menu items actually be shown from the right to the left, i.e. the contents of the menus should have the same alignment as the menus themselves - right alignment in this particular case for the right to left users. (ZZ) New features requests manager with secure online access for buyers and voting by guys and gals - your verified end customers? (XX) Affiliate system to bring you more buyers? I would like to have 15% off every sale that I generate (like in Amazon) in exchange for a high profile Affinity Designer promotion by me/companies/affiliates. I.e. get a link with an unique affiliate ID for myself/company which will be hidden once clicked and saved as a cookie on the user's PC/Browser. Real-time stats and bimonthly bank transfers please (and/or as soon as hitting a certain minimum per transfer, such as USD 500, for example); the real gold is in corporate sales and these come from the trials, so you need to track my/market's trial installs converted to the sales, if/when you are serious about affiliate for software; (YY) ZenDesk for support, anybody? There are still people out there who prefer emails. No, emails are not "dead". Yes, emails save time. A lot. (WW) No reinstall limits for purchased license(s), please. Thanks. Yes, I run and rerun VMs. A lot. Until you will finally make a Linux version. (VV) The currency in your shop for any and every item(s) is automatically set based on the user's location (like on the eBay), however the user (me) does not have a choice to change the currency (like on the eBay) and some users (like me) do not use currencies of the location of their IPs, and sometimes are not toed to any specific location (it was 2017 last time I checked the calendar). I think that at this day and age this is a surefire way to piss your user off just by limiting their freedom(s). We already have zero freedoms in this World, why cannot I change currency for your wonderful, professionally designed and HQ printed WorkBook, for ones sake? This is about your profits, by the way. (AA) Promise not to downgrade / break / add stupid things please? (I.e. promise NOT becoming anything like Magix AG, anyone? Please. Please? Thank you. No, THANK YOU!!!). Well, yeah, promises are cheap, but anyway... DO NOT SELL AFFINITY DESIGNER except as to your end customers (like me and better than me). Precisely improve the product (and its precision) and sell more licenses instead. Thanks for paying attention. Keywords: Xara Designer Pro X9, 365 alternative Inkscape alternative Corel Draw alternative Adobe Illustrator alternative PS Top 5 Shop Usability Award 2015 Mobile Web Award 2016 - best in industry German Design Award 2018 Nominee Just a random nobody. You are welcome.

First let me say, I love Affinity Designer so far and am very excited to have a quick, responsive, reasonably priced vector graphics tool available for Mac & Windows. I am currently using the Windows Public Beta and it is already the central tool in my design toolchain. There is one feature I use all the time in Inkscape and pretty much the only thing I find myself leaving Affinity Designer to accomplish, at least in my all-vector work. The ability to take an arbitrary path or set of paths and arrange them along another path. Below are some visual aids from the inkscape manual showing some of the possible uses of this effect: See the manual entry here. And if you want to try it for yourselves, the menu option in Inkscape is as follows: Extensions -> Generate from Path -> Pattern Along Path I would love to see this functionality inside Affinity Designer, and I think many many creative professionals either already rely on this or don't know about it :ph34r: Thanks again for all your hard work. I am (well, have been) a UI/UX designer and find what you guys have accomplished so far to be spot on. I don't think the way Inkscape presents this dialog is as intuitive as it could be, so if you guys decide to pursue this feature, keep that in mind. I like what you've done so far so I won't bias you with my input, but if y'all want any suggestions for how I would work this into the current Affinity Designer interface, I'd be happy to help.

I'm posting some new topics on things I feel are missing in AD. I use Xara Designer as my workhorse since it exists, but I really want to replace it -- seems the new company is focusing less and less in the professional market. I also use CorelDraw, Illustrator (with my students) and and even Inkscape now and then. So about the Layers panel, here are my suggestions along with some points I feel AD lags behind the competition: To toggle an object's visibility I just click its checkbox. That's fine, but to toggle its editability I have to select the object then click the single padlock in the upper right. (Which is misaligned BTW: the padlock icon is above the visibility checkboxes so it will mislead novice users into thinking that the checkboxes are used to lock layers.) Then a padlock icon appears and I can click it to unlock the object. I know AD is modeled after Illustrator, but these are quite inconsistent approaches for similar actions. Xara, CorelDRAW and even Inkscape have a much better solution: both commands are toggle icons for every object, and the padlock never disappears: it just changes state. Productivity tool: Solo layer / object (Xara). Productivity tool: a button to make all layers / objects visible (Xara again). Productivity tool: a button to make all layers / objects editable (Xara again). The thumbnails in AD are way better than the others, but they may become invisible because the background is always dark gray. Affinity should show a checkered background or compute the background color automatically, perhaps. Of course if anyone knows about hidden shortcuts of alternate ways of doing the above I'd love to hear from you. Thanks, and sorry for the long post...

Hi I had created a icon with vectors. I exported this as an svg (web) after this i uploaded it to https://icomoon.iothat I able to use it as a font on my website but in the preview the icon what not showing up. Now I try to open it in inkscape but there it is blurred (see the attached image). is that a bug? Kind regards, Madlip

Maybe we should all be looking to PhotoLine, Gimp, Scribus and InkScape for feature inspiration rather than Adobe, Corel and Xara. At least we'd know that the features are possible and available for implementation rather than blocked by a murder of laywers looking for a creative way to crush the little upstart. Any thoughts on this?

Hello, Currently, I"m drawing / Sketching by hand on paper, scanning them and importing into Inkscape which automatically traces / converts my drawing into a vector. I import that into affinity designer and continue working on the image. Can Affinity Designer turn Bitmap / pixel images / drawings - into vectors automatically like inkscape can ? Thanks Max

Is it possible to support an exported file from Inkscape that miss these...? - Corner Radius (Can be solved by turning curve to outline object) - Masking is lost **About masking; the SVG file which export from Illustrator, masking is lost too, but .ai .eps still work.

Hi Guys, Going from Inkscape to Affinity designer was been an awesome experience. One of the things I really liked in Inkscape is a tool called clone. When you change the original the clones all change as well. This makes it easy to make symmetrical icons and logos. not sure if its already in here or not, but It'd be nice to have. Cheers,