juliankaye Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 I own both Designer and PhotoHow do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 1 hour ago, juliankaye said: How do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it: Use another app. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 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...
juliankaye Posted May 3, 2021 Author Share Posted May 3, 2021 Like what app? that's not helpful at all. jeffers 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 What I mean is there is no auto-trace function in any Affinity app. There have been many topics discussing the alternatives -- just use the search box at the top of the page to find a sample of them. Quote All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.0 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...
Andy05 Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 Neither of the Affinity apps has automatic tracing capabilities. So, you either have to do it manually or search for a third party app (there are quite some threads with suggestions for vectorising and tracing apps/websites in this forums). Quote »A designer's job is to improve the general quality of life. In fact, it's the only reason for our existence.«Paul Rand (1914-1996) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 screenshot.afdesign 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...
iconoclast Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 4 hours ago, juliankaye said: Like what app? that's not helpful at all. You could use the free vector graphics software Inkscape for it. In most things, it is not as good as Affinity Designer, I think, but it has Autotracing (menu "Path" > "Trace Bitmap"). And that works pretty good. Be aware to download it from inkscape.org, because there are many fake websites on the net that spread malware (like audacity.de for example - the original site in this case is audacityteam.org). inkscape.org is the original site. You can usually control that by taking a look at the Wikipedia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 To do this in Affinity you have to use one of the tools that will create curves such as the pen tool in both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, this would be tedious on a shape like this so using a third-party trace app is quicker and easier, you can then tweak the result to suit your expectations. @v_kyr Kindly made this list of alternatives... Some desktop app tools potrace (Win/Mac/Linux, free) DragPotrace (a Mac only GUI frontend for potrace, free) autotrace (Win/Mac/Linux, free) Inkscape (Win/Mac/Linux, free) Intaglio Vectorize (Mac, free) MS Expression Design 4 (Win, free to use since longer times since discontinuous) Super Vectorizer (Mac, commercial) Image Vectorizer (Mac, commercial) Vector Magic (Win/Mac, commercial) ...and so on... Some online tracing tools: www.autotracer.org www.vectorizer.io www.vectorization.org www.photopea.org online-converting.com/autotrace/ online.rapidresizer.com/tracer.php ...and so on... v_kyr 1 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...
v_kyr Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 The partial tools overview list @firstdefence showed, can be seen here (note that the list is incomplete, there are of course overall more tools available than I listed) ... Vectorizing/tracing tools An adapted Java based freeware Delineate GUI app for accessing/using the "potrace & autotrace" tracers (Win/Mac/Linux) can be found here in forums resources section: Delineate - A Raster/Bitmap to SVG Converter 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...
firstdefence Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 There is also an app called VectorStyler that has quite a nice Image trace feature and you can copy and paste the result into Affinity apps. juliankaye 1 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...
PaulEC Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 6 hours ago, juliankaye said: How do I turn this graphic into an outline without having to trace it: I'm probably misunderstanding this, but the question was about turning the graphic into an outline without tracing it, rather than turning it into a vector. If this is the case, then (in Photo) you can just use "Filter" - "Detect" - "Detect Edges", then invert the image. juliankaye 1 Quote 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ac-13 Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 I had a go at this with your image using Affinity Photo and came up with the following: Apply a High-Pass Live Filter to the original - Radius 0 px, Monochrome unchecked, Blend Mode = Negation This gave an image mostly mid-grey but with edges, including much of the outer circle, much brighter. Merged the image layer with the live filter layer to give a pixel layer Applied a Threhold Adjustment Layer to that pixel layer, with the threshold value nudged up minimally to 51% from 50%, Blend Mode = Normal This gave an image almost entirely Black but with white outline edges. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 For a ‘less fussy’ result, if I wanted to get a rasterised outline from this raster image, for this specific image, I would probably use the selection tools as in my attached video. 2021-05-03 09-16-07.mp4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
h_d Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 If you don't need a vector curve but you do want a nice crisp image of the outline: In Affinity Photo: Use the Flood Select Tool. Uncheck Contiguous in the toolbar and click in the white area of the image. Go to the Select menu and choose Outline. Set the width to whatever you need. I chose 2px, centred. With the selection boundary ("marching ants") still active, from the Layer menu choose New Fill Layer. Set the colour of the fill layer to black. In the Layers panel, temporarily hide the original pixel layer and from the Select menu choose deselect: Choosing a wider Outline and then smoothing the selection before filling will stand up to more magnification. Mine is fine at 100% but the hard edge is stepped if you go much higher. The outline can be any colour you like, the Fill layer can be rasterised for compositing. @GarryP beat me to it! outline.afphoto Quote Affinity Photo 2.0.3, Affinity Designer 2.0.3, Affinity Publisher 2.0.3, Mac OSX 13, 2018 MacBook Pro 15" Intel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GarryP Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 4 minutes ago, h_d said: @GarryP beat me to it! But only by a matter of seconds, and you gave a slightly different solution, and also added smoothing which I failed to mention. h_d 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gremriel Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 50 minutes ago, firstdefence said: There is also an app called VectorStyler that has quite a nice Image trace feature and you can copy and paste the result into Affinity apps. That is an impressive piece of software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firstdefence Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 41 minutes ago, Gremriel said: That is an impressive piece of software. It can be glitchy at the moment because it's beta but it has some nifty features as well as the image trace, certainly one to keep an eye on. 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...
firstdefence Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 I would have thought this type of image would be used for crafting, maybe @juliankaye can expand on the reason for the request. 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...
GaryLearnTech Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 I recently came across another (currently) free tool for Mac, iPad and iPhone users - it's called Vectornator and one of its functions is an autotrace tool. The sample below was produced using the default settings and the default fills and strokes quickly restyled by me. vn quick conversion.svg Before you go getting too excited, it seems to require Big Sur for the current version (v4), though they do have a legacy version that works with Catalina available according to the "Why can't I download Vectornator on my Mac?" item in their FAQ. Quote —— Gary —— Photo/Designer/Publisher: Affinity Store, v2.1.1 release Mac mini (M1, 2020), 16GB/2TB, macOS Ventura 13.4.1(c) • MacBook Pro (Intel), macOS Ventura • Windows 10 via VMware Fusion • iOS: current release Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 1 hour ago, GaryLearnTech said: I recently came across another (currently) free tool for Mac, iPad and iPhone users - it's called Vectornator and one of its functions is an autotrace tool. GaryLearnTech 1 Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaryLearnTech Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 @Alfred Yeah, I did a quick forum search before posting so I knew it wasn't new around here (not really surprising, since it's now at v4). I only went ahead since it wasn't mentioned in @v_kyr's list posted higher up here by @firstdefence. Alfred 1 Quote —— Gary —— Photo/Designer/Publisher: Affinity Store, v2.1.1 release Mac mini (M1, 2020), 16GB/2TB, macOS Ventura 13.4.1(c) • MacBook Pro (Intel), macOS Ventura • Windows 10 via VMware Fusion • iOS: current release Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted May 3, 2021 Share Posted May 3, 2021 I’ve just discovered that what was Imaengine is now Vector Q, but the original Imaengine is back as a separate ‘legacy’ app. There’s also a simpler app, Vinilo, from the same developer. Quote Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juliankaye Posted May 3, 2021 Author Share Posted May 3, 2021 Thanks to PaulEC, that's exactly what I was looking for, and thanks all for trying to help, you rock! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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