Ma3rk Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 I'm trial testing AD and not finding a tool or function that's in Adobe Illustrator that I use a lot. Think it's just called Trace tool, but will create vector lines & shapes from raster images, using a parameters UI to set # of colors, curve quality, etc. Is that something AD can do? If so, what is it called in AD & where do I find info? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gear maker Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 Mark, AD doesn't currently have an auto trace tool. There have been several requests for it. Some day there will probably be such but not yet. chetongueek 1 Quote iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted December 24, 2019 Share Posted December 24, 2019 One have to take some third party tool for tracing here, like for example: potrace (win + mac, free) DragPotrace (mac GUI frontend to potrace, free) autotrace (win + mac, free) Inkscape (win + mac, free) MS Expression Design 4 (win, nowadays free) Super Vectorizer (mac) Image Vectorizer (mac) Vector Magic (win + mac) Intaglio Vectorize (mac, free) Image Vectorizer (online tool, free) Autotracer (online tool, free) Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free) ...and so on... SrPx and chetongueek 2 Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ma3rk Posted December 24, 2019 Author Share Posted December 24, 2019 Well, drat. I do appreciate the list of 3rd party tools though. Thanks for the info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Studio55 Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 On 12/24/2019 at 1:27 PM, v_kyr said: One have to take some third party tool for tracing here, And of course, Serif DrawPlus. That feature has been in DrawPlus for perhaps a decade. I just purchased Affinity Photo and Designer today and was really surprised to not find tracing in the product considering Serif already had a pretty effective set of code for that. But I guess it will be brought forward at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 1 hour ago, Studio55 said: I just purchased Affinity Photo and Designer today and was really surprised to not find tracing in the product considering Serif already had a pretty effective set of code for that. The Affinity code was written from scratch, starting with a 'blank slate' approach that reused none of the code of the older Serif apps. This was done for several reasons, one of which was to make it possible to use the same core code for Mac, iPadOS, & Windows versions of the Affinity apps. Another was to support a single unified native file format that all the apps in the Affinity suite could open & edit without any conversion or data loss. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jowday Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 47 minutes ago, R C-R said: The Affinity code was written from scratch, starting with a 'blank slate' approach that reused none of the code of the older Serif apps. This was done for several reasons, one of which was to make it possible to use the same core code for Mac, iPadOS, & Windows versions of the Affinity apps. Another was to support a single unified native file format that all the apps in the Affinity suite could open & edit without any conversion or data loss. None? It is a miracle then that the JPG output from the Affinity line is exactly the same as from the Serif Plus programs - and exactly as bad. No improvement there - just disappointment after the hype and inflated marketing. A blank slate of architecture - yes - but in many places same algorithms - equally slow, equally inferior. JPG output, unsharp mask, noise reduction. Slow and inferior compared to the competition. Dated open source code under the hood. And lets not get started on RAW conversions. Serif started from scratch after working for 15? 20? years on the Plus line - now targeting three platforms (Win, OS X, iOS) with a small crew. You will wait for a very long time for the features you had in the Plus line @Studio55 @Ma3rk Studio55 1 Quote "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface." Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else. “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ma3rk Posted April 11, 2020 Author Share Posted April 11, 2020 ... and how does that 'splain that Designer STILL doesn't have that basic tool that I've had since Adobe Illustrator CS6? Come on Affinity! That was the deal killer for a sale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 Actually, there was Live Trace in CS2 and beyond before being superseded in CS6 with Image Trace. Quote iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9 (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum) Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 5 hours ago, Jowday said: Serif started from scratch after working for 15? 20? years on the Plus line - now targeting three platforms (Win, OS X, iOS) with a small crew. You will wait for a very long time for the features you had in the Plus line @Studio55 @Ma3rk And you will have to wait forever for cross platform compatibility or a universal native file format in the Plus line. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7 Affinity Photo 1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted April 11, 2020 Share Posted April 11, 2020 20 hours ago, Studio55 said: And of course, Serif DrawPlus. That feature has been in DrawPlus for perhaps a decade. I just purchased Affinity Photo and Designer today and was really surprised to not find tracing in the product considering Serif already had a pretty effective set of code for that. But I guess it will be brought forward at some point. Never really used DrawPlus, thus can't tell if the tracing facilities which that software offered were here exceptional good or not at all. However at least it offered to have some tracing capabilities. - Other than that, there are a bunch of tracing apps (also some opensource/freeware ones) where some of them partly produce quite good results. - Code wise it wouldn't be that difficult to adapt/convert/take over previous tracing algorithms, as far as the effort is worth it, meaning here in terms of what tracing quality results it produces then. Actually and AFAIK mostly all the better tracing algorithms code (even for opensource like Potrace etc.) have to be licened for usage in the commercial fields. Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Studio55 Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 2 hours ago, v_kyr said: Never really used DrawPlus, thus can't tell if the tracing facilities which that software offered were here exceptional good or not at all. I'm not well versed in the other programs, so I can't say how close DrawPlus was to the stat of the art. My guess is not so close. It seems to me that I ended up with what I wanted about 70% of the time, which is something, but not great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 17 hours ago, firstdefence said: Actually, there was Live Trace in CS2 and beyond before being superseded in CS6 with Image Trace. And before that, Streamline, a separate utility that in many/most respects was better than what made it into AI. 2 hours ago, v_kyr said: Never really used DrawPlus, thus can't tell if the tracing facilities which that software offered were here exceptional good or not at all. ... 8 minutes ago, Studio55 said: I'm not well versed in the other programs, so I can't say how close DrawPlus was to the stat of the art. My guess is not so close. It seems to me that I ended up with what I wanted about 70% of the time, which is something, but not great. I've had best most consistent results when using Vector Magic at a job I once had. Apart from that application, I found no one application with a tracing utility ever did all images best. So if one mucked it up after trying, I would try the image in another. My results in DP never hit a 70% good result. AI did better for many, CD certain of those that AI didn't handle well, Potrace for a decent job on yet others. But DP did do a good job on images that oft times I couldn't get acceptable results with the others. For AD, unless/until certain Select By features are also integrated, a tracing feature would be, to me, a useless addition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Studio55 Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 1 hour ago, MikeW said: My results in DP never hit a 70% good result. I'm not an artist by any definition of the word. My demands are probably a lot lower than most people here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 12, 2020 Share Posted April 12, 2020 21 minutes ago, Studio55 said: I'm not an artist by any definition of the word. ... Gosh, me either! My usage of tracing is typically for enlarging enough for usage on large format printing. And I'll only use tracing if I cannot enlarge an image using various image enlargement applications. Me? I consider myself a competent mechanic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMcK Posted April 13, 2020 Share Posted April 13, 2020 I remember Streamline. 😌 Just now had to return to my old and trusted AI CS5 to use the great Live Trace feature with tweakable presets. Thought I'd be migrating to the Catalina OS and 100% Affinity Suite by now. I'll try out one of the third party tools before I totally let AI go. Affinity: please make this an upgrade feature soon. loukash 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard127 Posted May 18, 2020 Share Posted May 18, 2020 (edited) Guys. You have to have a trace tool soon. It's embarrassing. Why should I go to a third party tool, when most (even freeware) vector software has had this function for some years. It's a deal killer for some and it doesn't help when people are being pushed to other apps such as Inkscape, which is excellent within itself and could lead to potential customers wondering if they even need AD. I love your software and am loyal to it, but the lack of a trace tool leaves me scratching my head. Edited May 18, 2020 by Richard127 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blaustift Posted January 22, 2021 Share Posted January 22, 2021 Hi there, I unshackled meself from Adobe's CS, I also have used Coreldraw a lot. The vector effect is one that I use a lot and vector handling I find more intuitive and unparalleled in Corel. Having gotten the Affinity suite I was really hoping to leave software hopping for individual features behind. Sad to say but I find it somewhat disappointing Affinity designer has no trace/vectorize feature built in. Hope the guys and gals at affinity will get round to adding one in the foreseeable future. would be a very useful addition to a solid application Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard127 Posted January 23, 2021 Share Posted January 23, 2021 Yeah. Still waiting. It's not showing up in any Betas. One day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cazbo Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 Ive just purchased AD as my AI subscription was coming to an end but am very disappointed there is no trace option - hopefully this will be resolved soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard127 Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 I use Inkscape if I need to trace, and it's completely free. Does a good job, but would prefer if it was native to Affinity products. I'm sure it's on their list of things to do. Anyone form Serif got a comment about this, as it's a deal breaker for a lot of people? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1GR3 Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 Most of the time I don't need, which makes it even worse to find a workaround in those rare occasions. This shouldn't be so hard to implement! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blaustift Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 dear Santa, as we all have been so very terribly good, put into our stocking a trace tool! pretty, pleeeeeeeeeeease???!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pšenda Posted December 10, 2021 Share Posted December 10, 2021 1 hour ago, 1GR3 said: which makes it even worse to find a workaround in those rare occasions. For example: Quote Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301 Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155. Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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