Autotrace anytime soon?

[Mike Swartzbeck]

The one thing that keeps Designer from being a proper professional application is the glaring absence of autotrace. Will we be seeing autotrace in Designer or Photo anytime soon?

This is a serious deficiency in an otherwise quite good application. It can't properly be marketed as "professional grade" software because of this — it's "advanced hobbyist" at best... and I'm a professional, not a hobbyist.

Autotrace has been a bread-and-butter feature of every professional-grade application I've used, going back to FreeHand v2 in the early 1990s. Currently, I'm engaged in an ongoing search for a decent Mac autotrace utility to fill this gaping hole in Designer — and so far, I've had miserable luck. Inkscape won't export to a format Designer can read properly, and my short experience with Vectornator has shown it to be horribly substandard.

I'm getting the hang of Designer well enough and will be able to use it, but — without a proper autotrace feature, I can't really recommend it to other professionals.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Mike Swartzbeck
mangled sentence

[GarryP]

Was there a specific reason why you created another thread about something which already has plenty of threads about it?
Or, to put that another way, is there something you’ve written here which could not simply be added to another existing thread?

The more threads there are about a thing the more the discussion of that thing is ‘diluted’.
I refer you to the forum guidelines:

[Mike Swartzbeck]

Thanks; my goof; my searches for one particular thread couldn't bring it up, and I'd totally lost track of it.

[Boldlinedesign]

I wouldn't worry too much about starting new threads on existing topics. The requests go back multiple years with little response from affinity. If we only used the original threads, they'd be endlessly long

[walt.farrell]

6 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

The requests go back multiple years with little response from affinity.

Serif generally does not respond in the Feature Requests forums. They're for us to provide input, not for them to provide feedback.

[Boldlinedesign]

@walt.farrellit would be nice if they did respond and ask follow up questions and engage more with their customer base. 

Even if they didn't comment, the repeated requests for features goes back years and few show up in the final product. Affinity does not respond often in word or action and that is concerning to many. I love affinity and own every app, but they are turning off their most loyal fans with their secrecy and glacial improvement 

[Pšenda]

On 1/29/2022 at 6:55 AM, Boldlinedesign said:

If we only used the original threads, they'd be endlessly long

Yes, an infinite number of threads with exactly the same problem, and in most cases with exactly the same and repetitive views, is definitely better and clearer for users looking for some information.

[Boldlinedesign]

Sadly the joke only reflects poorly on serif.

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Sadly the joke only reflects poorly on serif.

Do you think? In my opinion, rather to users who are not able to respect the relatively clear and easy rules of the forum.

[Boldlinedesign]

5 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Do you think? In my opinion, rather to users who are not able to respect the relatively clear and easy rules of the forum.

I do think so indeed - There's a collective clamoring from the customer base stretching back 5+ years for Serif to add what are considered basic tools and features found in other vector programs. Taking 5+ years to implement basic vector tools and features is not a good look for Serif.  Expecting users to go pull up years old threads to add yet another request to the years long list is not realistic. There's no good reason for multi-year long threads all asking for the same thing

[Pšenda]

45 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

Expecting users to go pull up years old threads to add yet another request to the years long list is not realistic. There's no good reason for multi-year long threads all asking for the same thing

And what is the benefit in creating more and more recurring "new / young" threads? Is there anything beneficial in them compared to the old ones? - the function is still not implemented, all applications (except Affinity) have had this function for a long time (which is, as I assume, a reason for low priority - the function can be replaced in dozens of different ways), so what's new in this thread?
By the way, a new thread with Autotrace is here every month, so it shouldn't be a problem to continue with these fresh threads - or perhaps yes?
https://www.google.com/search?q=autotrace+site:forum.affinity.serif.com+after:2021-12-01

[Boldlinedesign]

 

Quote

"what is the benefit in creating more and more recurring "new / young" threads? Is there anything beneficial in them compared to the old ones? - the function is still not implemented,"

So far there has not been much benefit in many years to doing single threads either unfortunately. 

Quote

"all applications (except Affinity) have had this function for a long time (which is, as I assume, a reason for low priority - the function can be replaced in dozens of different ways)"

People are trying to get away from Adobe for example, and if possible, would prefer a one stop option to do all of these things. I cannot understand why it has been a low priority and taken many years for Affinity to implement what it took other apps, like Vectorstyler for example, less than a year to do. Putting off your customer base for many years and not responding to their requests with any sort of roadmap is not going to help keep the loyalty. I want Affinity to succeed, but they're going to need to address these things sooner than later if they want people to stick around to purchase version 2.0

[Petar Petrenko]

I know Affinity has an aversion to polls, but my opinion is that sorting the poll by the number of votes is a great indicator what users most want to get in the next version. It would be a matter of mutual satisfaction - the company would have far fewer annoying customers, and they, in turn, would always know what to expect in the next version.

[Wosven]

If people took time to read previous posts about the same subject, they would stop asking and giving the same comments... already having their answers.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, NNN said:

the company would have far fewer annoying customers, and they, in turn, would always know what to expect in the next version.

Serif have told us that their development plan is not (and will not be) determined by the results of voting. If there were a system like you propose, the users would have unrealistic expectations, and  be more unhappy.

[Boldlinedesign]

2 hours ago, Wosven said:

If people took time to read previous posts about the same subject, they would stop asking and giving the same comments... already having their answers.

People are not going to want to dig through literal years of a thread to figure out why these basic features were not already be in the program 

[walt.farrell]

15 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

People are not going to want to dig through literal years of a thread to figure out why these basic features were not already be in the program 

If they don't want to know the history, they can simply add their agreement via "Yes, I want this, too" or "+1" and move on. They don't need to read all the history if they don't want it, and they don't need to start a new thread.

[Boldlinedesign]

@walt.farrell I want to see Affinity do awesome - I own all their available apps on every platform. At some point we can call a spade a spade and hold Affinity to the same standard we expect from other things we purchase and use. In terms of their UI and rendering and studio link approach - they are awesome. When it comes to putting out a well-rounded product with all the basic tools and functions in a timely manner - they stink. We can still love Affinity to be critical of their communication and their efficiency 

[Wosven]

2 hours ago, Boldlinedesign said:

People are not going to want to dig through literal years of a thread to figure out why these basic features were not already be in the program 

But they should, since we won't redo the conversations here, lol

[Boldlinedesign]

7 minutes ago, Wosven said:

But they should, since we won't redo the conversations here, lol

No need to redo conversations, at this rate all we need to do is copy and paste the same answer every time "no it has not been added yet, yes we realize it's been many many years since it was first suggested, yes many have asked for it, no we don't know why they have not added it, check back next year. thanks!'

[Wosven]

A simple reminder for you, @Boldlinedesign :

On 1/28/2022 at 9:14 AM, GarryP said:

I refer you to the forum guidelines:

 

 

After a few years or having the same posts from people that don't apply simple courtesy or simply don't follow the forum rules, I can assure you that the simplest answer we can politely give is:

35 minutes ago, Boldlinedesign said:

"no it has not been added yet, yes we realize it's been many many years since it was first suggested, yes many have asked for it, no we don't know why they have not added it, check back next year. thanks!'

...well, at least when the question is asked less than twice a week!