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Will Designer ever have tracing capabilities


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On 3/16/2020 at 12:43 AM, undercovergypsy said:

I used serif draw for many years and really loved (and used on a regular basis) the tracing feature.

Maybe I just never got the hang of getting the settings right, but, with DrawPlus, I usually ended up with a fairly shapeless splodge! If I managed to get a halfway decent result, it had hundreds of nodes and was a huge file size.

Now, on the odd occasions I need to do tracing I use Inkscape. It would be useful if AD did have a good tracing tool, but , if it's not really good (at least as good as in Inkscape) I'd rather they left it alone and concentrated on improving other features.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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On ‎3‎/‎20‎/‎2020 at 7:02 PM, Kuttyjoe said:

Illustrator's implementation has been excellent...Coreldraw 2020 now has a much improved tracing feature...

One guy's opinion. But you still haven't defined what constitutes an objectively "very good" auto-trace feature. You've just said "very good" equates to "excellent" or "much improved."

All of these impassioned 'must have' demand threads for an auto-trace feature are tellingly devoid of real world examples of when and why an auto trace feature is so dang 'essential' and how its absence renders Affinity (or any other program) 'useless' and prevents 'switching to it' (another silly cliché) from any other program.

I'm quite familiar with Illustrator and Corel Draw (and most other mainstream vector drawing programs). Illustrator's auto-trace feature is a time-wasteful and tedious interface, being implemented as a so-called 'live' effect. That was its differentiator. Draw's is more straightforward in terms of interface. But the results from either are generally pretty much the same as all the others. Yeah, users get acquainted with and accustomed to particular 'favorite' tweak and setting routines of the parameters provided in their pet drawing program and then declare it 'better'.

Here's what's objectively very bad about it: The vast majority of auto-tracing usage is just amateurish bad practice.There hasn't been any significant advancement in auto-trace feature results in decades. They still have no shape-recognition intelligence. They don't know an eyeball from a car tire. They don't even know either one of them is supposed to be round. All they do is try to draw a path around a meaningless contiguous group of similarly-colored pixels, with no discernment whatsoever about what that set of pixels even represents. So the results are just a bunch of ill-formed paths, which look ugly and jagged when enlarged. That's completely antithetical to the whole intent and purpose of vector-based graphics in the first place: vector-based resolution independence. They all effectively swap one kind of poor-quality ugliness for another; meaningless jagged path shapes instead of bitmap stair-stepping.

And because auto-tracing is a distinct, standalone operation, there is no reason why it shouldn't be done with a standalone utility, even if that utility is a whole other program. And multiple offerings exist for it that are even cost-free. Everyone nowadays routinely has multiple programs running concurrently and switching back and forth between them with a click hasn't been a problem since the mid 80s. You don't need everything you do to be built into a single program. If you think you do, then just think of your operating system as that "one program."

Until auto-tracing algorithms actually undergo some significant advancement in the way of shape-recognition in combination with true path optimization, there is no need for every single drawing program that comes along to replicate the same old bad-practice with yet another "me, too" built-in auto-trace feature.

It's not even on my wish-list for Affinity.

JET

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Tracing features are good for certain artistic purposes (some king of illustration), but that’s it.

Best regards!

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4 hours ago, JET_Affinity said:

One guy's opinion. But you still haven't defined what constitutes an objectively "very good" auto-trace feature. You've just said "very good" equates to "excellent" or "much improved."

All of these impassioned 'must have' demand threads for an auto-trace feature are tellingly devoid of real world examples of when and why an auto trace feature is so dang 'essential' and how its absence renders Affinity (or any other program) 'useless' and prevents 'switching to it' (another silly cliché) from any other program.

I'm quite familiar with Illustrator and Corel Draw (and most other mainstream vector drawing programs). Illustrator's auto-trace feature is a time-wasteful and tedious interface, being implemented as a so-called 'live' effect. That was its differentiator. Draw's is more straightforward in terms of interface. But the results from either are generally pretty much the same as all the others. Yeah, users get acquainted with and accustomed to particular 'favorite' tweak and setting routines of the parameters provided in their pet drawing program and then declare it 'better'.

Here's what's objectively very bad about it: The vast majority of auto-tracing usage is just amateurish bad practice.There hasn't been any significant advancement in auto-trace feature results in decades. They still have no shape-recognition intelligence. They don't know an eyeball from a car tire. They don't even know either one of them is supposed to be round. All they do is try to draw a path around a meaningless contiguous group of similarly-colored pixels, with no discernment whatsoever about what that set of pixels even represents. So the results are just a bunch of ill-formed paths, which look ugly and jagged when enlarged. That's completely antithetical to the whole intent and purpose of vector-based graphics in the first place: vector-based resolution independence. They all effectively swap one kind of poor-quality ugliness for another; meaningless jagged path shapes instead of bitmap stair-stepping.

And because auto-tracing is a distinct, standalone operation, there is no reason why it shouldn't be done with a standalone utility, even if that utility is a whole other program. And multiple offerings exist for it that are even cost-free. Everyone nowadays routinely has multiple programs running concurrently and switching back and forth between them with a click hasn't been a problem since the mid 80s. You don't need everything you do to be built into a single program. If you think you do, then just think of your operating system as that "one program."

Until auto-tracing algorithms actually undergo some significant advancement in the way of shape-recognition in combination with true path optimization, there is no need for every single drawing program that comes along to replicate the same old bad-practice with yet another "me, too" built-in auto-trace feature.

It's not even on my wish-list for Affinity.

JET

100% of what you've said here appears to be pure speculation without the benefit of experience.

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Just now, Kuttyjoe said:

...to the best of your limited knowledge about the work that people are doing.

Yes, to the best of my knowledge because nobody gives good examples.

Best regards!

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On 3/21/2020 at 6:56 AM, PaulEC said:

Maybe I just never got the hang of getting the settings right, but, with DrawPlus, I usually ended up with a fairly shapeless splodge!

LOL  Yep.  DrawPlus had the most unpredictable tracing of any software I've ever used.  You could use it just to entertain yourself.  But sometimes, it actually did work.

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On 3/21/2020 at 6:39 AM, JohnChr said:


I'm curious too with that "very good".

 

I suppose the problem with understanding "very good" is in your idea about how tracing is actually being used.  If you assume it's about converting a photograph into an artistic vector rendition, then it make sense.  But for people working in print, vector tracing is about faithfully recreating images with limited colors such as logos as vectors that can be color separated, and/or enlarged to any size with perfect quality, for print.  Makes sense, right?  The only question is whether or not there is vector software that is up to that task.  The answer is, absolutely!  And there is absolutely software that is not good enough for this work.  I've been using vector tracing this way for decades. Since the days of Adobe streamline, and Corel Trace as separate programs.  Bringing them into Coreldraw and Illustrator simply made the process faster.  It's odd to see people like Jet arguing against it. 

A quality vector tracing tool for the work I do is one that can achieve an accurate result, or near accurate result and do it in a short amount of time.  I did say that above actually.  " One click and a few seconds worth of adjustments and I'm done. "   Illustrator's tracing absolutely does that.  Coreldraw has historically not been up to the task, but the latest update is a real improvement, though still not as good as Illustrator.  Inkscape is OK, but messy.  DrawPlus was too unpredictable for serious use.  And there are some others with varying degrees of accuracy and time.  But Illustrator also has other tools that work well with tracing.  For example, if I trace a logo and get a pretty good result that still needs work, I switch to the brush tool, which can toggle the node editor and the magical path smoothing tool.  I don't actually use the brush, just the node editor and the path smoother.  I select the object, and go over a line and it magically smooths out.  I do this at the speed of someone doing doing rough sketches.  It is an incredibly fast workflow to get a great result.  Mission accomplished.  But what if vector tracing did not exist?  Logo recreation that takes me between 10 seconds, and 2 minutes, might end up taking me 45 minutes to redraw with other tools.  I can't speak for what this tool means for anyone else, but I do know very well how critical it is for the work I do.  Think about it.  I'm working at X dollars per hour.  A customer sends me a logo and says, send me back a "pdf" version of this.  You may not know it, but in the print industry, there's so much frustration with customers providing garbage quality raster art that many company are flat out refusing any "photoshop" art.  That has also caused a brain drain where company no longer have people with the skills to even deal with photoshop art, but that's another, interesting conversation.  Anyway, "pdf" is customer speak for "vector" as customers nowadays are much less knowledgeable than 20 years ago when even customers knew what "camera ready" art meant. So vector tracing is critical.

Another example.  A friend of mine is a tradition artist.  She brings her black and white sketches with all of their pencil marks and smears and wants them to be prepared for print, and colorized.  I scan it in.  Do a few seconds of adjustments in Photoshop. Then bring it into Illustrator and vector trace it.  Now I have art that is ready to to be colorized.  This is very, very quick work because of the tracing.  Depending on the art and the print shop, I could also have just colorized it in Photoshop but as I said, some shops see Photoshop and instantly refuse because by now, they don't have that expertise in house.  There are some people who actually think that art MUST be vectorized in order to be printed.  Anyway, I vectorize her art, and colorize it and do it all in a very efficient  way thanks to not just Photoshop, but also Illustrator's superb vector tracing.

Another example.  I have another friend who creates art traditionally, but he draws on transparent film, and treats the film like layers!  Each film will be a different color when finished.  He adds registration marks, scans it into Photoshop, cleans up a little, then over to Illustrator to vector trace.  Then, each film/layer simply gets colored and now he has color separated art ready for print.

None of those examples are about artistry. All of them are about accuracy and utility.

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33 minutes ago, Kuttyjoe said:

It's ok.  Just trust that there's more going on than what you know.

Do you always believe something that someone tells you because there is more than what you know?

Best regards!

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7 minutes ago, Kuttyjoe said:

No.  I also don't fantasize that I know all that there is to know.

Yeah. Gladly, noone on this conversation thinks that.

Best regards!

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6 hours ago, Mithferion said:

Tracing features are good for certain artistic purposes (some king of illustration), but that’s it.

Best regards!

I second that.

I rarely use tracing features but when i do it's with Inkscape.

Edited by JohnChr
forgot something ...
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AD doesn't need to wait for "the best tracing routine known to human kind" before it is added (my paraphrase of Serif's response). How good it is can be refined over time.

If the exact same principles were applied to the core applications, they wouldn't have been released to this day.

Personally, I would opt to roll in Potrace and build a really good UI for it.

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3 hours ago, Kuttyjoe said:

There are some people who actually think that art MUST be vectorized in order to be printed.  Anyway, I vectorize her art, and colorize it and do it all in a very efficient  way thanks to not just Photoshop, but also Illustrator's superb vector tracing.

Yes, i understand, some people think that. For example you don't need to vectorize a whole comic inked page.

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I have used adobe capture and you are right, asfh, it does a decent job. I have used Corel, Serif DP and Illustrator and I find the first two easier to use. I can't use Corel anymore because it was a work product and not available to me any more. I have re-installed DP just for the tracing but I thought it would just be nice to have it in one program. I don't understand why if it was in DP it is such a hard thing to add to AD?

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7 hours ago, undercovergypsy said:

I don't understand why if it was in DP it is such a hard thing to add to AD?

There are lots of features that were in Serif's "legacy" range that aren't (yet?) available in the Affinity range. Serif have said that the Affinity products are built "from the ground up" and are not some sort of upgrade to their previous products. As I understand it, and I'm no expert, you can't just take a bit of code from one piece of software and drop it into another one. So just because a feature was available (for example) in DrawPlus, it doesn't mean that it can easily be added to Affinity Designer.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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