List of some third party vectorization & tracing tools

[loukash]

35 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Sooner or later all actualized/updated apps won't support older MacOS versions

You know what? I'm pretty happy that I almost don't have to deal with any updates on El Capitan anymore. The stuff I'm using here since years is stuff that for the most parts just works. By now I know what it can do and how to work with it, be it design, audio recording and editing, web programming, writing, databases, you name it. No obligation to learn completely new workflows (after I have finally figured out my Affinity workflows two years ago).
Never change a working system.
They will pry my MacBook Pro mid-2012 running El Capitan from my cold, dead hands! 
(And in case the MBP 2012 should die before I do: They will pry my MacBook Pro 2008 running El Capitan from my cold, dead hands! )

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, loukash said:

You know what? I'm pretty happy that I almost don't have to deal with any updates on El Capitan anymore. The stuff I'm using here since years is stuff that for the most parts just works. By now I know what it can do and how to work with it, be it design, audio recording and editing, web programming, writing, databases, you name it. No obligation to learn completely new workflows (after I have finally figured out my Affinity workflows two years ago).

Well maybe from some usage point of view, aka once carved in stone. - Though keep in mind that you are cutted of/away from newer apps and technology that have come along. To give you an idea of what I mean is, no more Firefox/Chrome/Safari ... webbrowser updates, Mail.app doesn't support/fullfil >= TLS 1.2, a bunch of interesting apps don't run under El Capitan at all any more (since they are build/compiled for much newer MacOS versions). Xcode 8.2.1 & Swift 3.01 & clang 8.0 are long time outdated and don't support newer build projects etc. And so on ... the list gets long and longer here! - With other words, time goes by...!

6 hours ago, loukash said:

Never change a working system.
They will pry my MacBook Pro mid-2012 running El Capitan from my cold, dead hands! 
(And in case the MBP 2012 should die before I do: They will pry my MacBook Pro 2008 running El Capitan from my cold, dead hands! )

RIP. - There comes a time when you need to cut old hardware/software braids whether you like it or not, time and evolving hardware and software technologies dictate this. - And unfortunately for El Capitan, that time has long since come.

[loukash]

10 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

There comes a time when you need to cut old hardware/software braids whether you like it or not

By then I'll be retired and just play bass guitar, listen to my vinyl collection, or simply just continue with my "old school" illustrations using Jaxon oil pastels and 3B pencil like I did the past … hm, 38 years. Ah, good times ahead!  

P.S. Let's not get too off topic in your useful thread!  

[Boldlinedesign]

On 1/22/2023 at 9:20 AM, loukash said:

Ultimately easier to use than e.g. VectorStyler which actually has serious issues to stay stable on El Capitan; although that's not necessarily unexpected, given that primarily it must be compatible with Ventura as well. I expect El Capitan support being dropped from VectorStyler pretty soon.

I have an old computer with el capitan installed that I use almost exclusively for Adobe CS6 suite needs - things I still can't accomplish in either affinity or Vectorstyler yet. 
I haven't noticed any serious issues or stability problems in the El Capitan version of Vectorstyler, but then again, I use it sparingly on that machine. I use Vectorstyler primarily on my M1 mac at this point. 
I also would think support for El Capitan with Vectorstyler would end at some point sooner than later as well 

[sfriedberg]

Another tracing application I didn't see mentioned above is in CorelDRAW.  It used to be a standalone application that shipped with CD, but it's been integrated into the vector graphic part of Corel Graphic Suite.  It's been a while since I used it (and I assume it's gotten better) but even a decade ago it was pretty capable.  You could obviously trace solid outlines.  But you could also generate a vector trace of photos or gradient images, with considerable control over how finely the trace program broke things up.  Results of tracing "natural" raster images were not as clean as what Vector VonDoom routinely shows off, but you'd get recognizable faces from a portrait photo, etc.

[v_kyr]

4 hours ago, sfriedberg said:

Another tracing application I didn't see mentioned above is in CorelDRAW.

I didn't mentioned/listed all other full blown commercial vector graphics apps like Illustrator, CorelDraw, ... etc. with tracing facilities, since usually nobody is going to buy and install one of those beside the Affinity apps just in order to perform some quick image to vector vectorization/tracing. Meaning here, if one has & use Ai or CorelDraw and so on, then I personally don't see much need for ADe at all here. Also Inkscape is named among the list just because it is freeware, thus free to use and since it's tracing facilities are potrace/autotrace based.

So the main theme for the in this thread shown list is smaller seperate to use, plain bitmap to vector tracing tools, aka tracing tools which do nothing else here than just performing tracing/vectorization of bitmap images/drawings.

[postmadesign]

Vectorizer.ai (already in the list) has the best vector trace I have seen so far, The results are amazing... I tried various kinds of images, and the results are always very good, both for flat logo and illustration as well as more complex work.

Check this result from a very poor JPEG image:

[tinvin kel]

I would recommend below online tracing tool. It's free and available online.

Online tracing tools:

SVGConverter.app

Also, svgstorm.com is now svgconverter.app

 

Edited May 28, 2023 by tinvin kel

[AALEXX]

Hi Tinvin Kel,

I have tried it, see result attached.

Not so nice :)

[v_kyr]

On 6/1/2023 at 3:29 PM, AALEXX said:

Not so nice :)

LOL, well let's just say ...there are better ones!

• aalexx_prod.pdf
• aalexx_prod.svg

[Feelmyself]

On 9/3/2022 at 1:16 AM, v_kyr said:

Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs:

Where * = "the more the better"

• Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac) **
• TracedLines (commercial, Mac)
• Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac)
• DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac) *
• Potrace (free, Win + Mac) *
• AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac) *
• Inkscape (free, Win + Mac) **
• MS Expression Design 4 (Win, nowadays free)
• Image Vectorizer (commercial, Mac)
• Trace (free, Win+Mac)
• Vector Magic (commercial, Win + Mac) ***
• vtracer (free, Win + Mac) *
• Vectorize! / Legoist (commercial, Mac)
• ...etc...

Online tracing tools:

• autotracer
• vectorizer
• vectorizer.ai **
• vectorization
• Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free)
• VTracer *
• Online SVG Converter (by Potrace)
• Svgco
• Svgstorm
• SVGConverter
• ...etc...

Online centerline supporting tracing tools:

• Rapid resizer
• fConvert
• Online Vectorizer
• ...etc...

iPad tracing tools:

• Adobe Capture
• Vector Q
• Vectornator
• Vectorize!
• ...etc...

Some forum threads about tool based bitmap tracing/vectorization:

• Image Tracing in Affinity Designer?
• Image Trace to Vector Path
• Converting Pixel drawing to Vector?
• Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER
• Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer
• Good vector tracer or vectorizer
• ... and so on ...

Thanks for the listing. It is really useful.

[Gregor_zbjk]

Thank you for this great list! 

[Feelmyself]

After some time investigation, I finally picked Super Vectorizer Pro from the list. Thanks  v_kyr. You save me a lot of time.

Vector Magic is also good with the tracing effects but its price $295 is far more than I could accept.

[v_kyr]

27 minutes ago, Feelmyself said:

After some time investigation, I finally picked Super Vectorizer Pro from the list. Thanks  v_kyr. You save me a lot of time.

Vector Magic is also good with the tracing effects but its price $295 is far more than I could accept.

You're welcome!

SV Pro is a good choice for macOS here, as it is a fast performer, supports also centerline tracing, runs natively on both Apple Intel/Arm (so also natively on Apple Silicon Mx) based hardware. Further it can often be found with attractive discounted price rabats on the net.

In contrast to that, Vector Magic even it has an algorithmically oustanding good tracing engine and usability concept, runs only emulated on Macs with Apple Silicon, since it was long time ago compiled for Intel based Macs. Price wise it's very steep (unattractive for single private users) and so mostly only interesting for business companies.

[Feelmyself]

On 8/8/2023 at 4:46 PM, v_kyr said:

You're welcome!

SV Pro is a good choice for macOS here, as it is a fast performer, supports also centerline tracing, runs natively on both Apple Intel/Arm (so also natively on Apple Silicon Mx) based hardware. Further it can often be found with attractive discounted price rabats on the net.

Amazing! I didn't realize that Super Vectorizer Pro has all these features. Yes, I got the product when the price was 50% off.   I am very satisfied.

[Lane]

So I found myself just using vectorizer.ai. From everything I've tried for use with logo type images, it's as good as if I redrew it myself. The minimum number of nodes smartly placed. Downright magically really. It's currently free to use the online converter. Some day I'll need a subscription, which I hate, but I'm really on faced with needing to do a bunch of print to vector logo conversions once a year. I'll probably pony up for one month, and then cancel for the months I'm not using it. 

https://vectorizer.ai

As an example of what it does, I created an ugly logo, saved it as a png at fairly low resolution, and ran it through vectorizer.ai. See for yourself what it did. I won't bother posting what any of the other options for Mac did. I consider them all unusable. 

If there is any other one time purchase program at a sane price that can do that, I'm all over it.

sample logo original.svg sample logo vectorizerdotai.svg

[Frozen Death Knight]

Anyone who has done a quality comparison of the options on this list? Which ones do people think produce the better/worse results?

[walt.farrell]

Just now, Frozen Death Knight said:

Anyone who has done a quality comparison of the options on this list? Which ones do people think produce the better/worse results?

Doesn't it depend strongly on the image you start with, and what kind of result you're looking for? I'm not sure there is a single answer that works for everything for everyone.

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Doesn't it depend strongly on the image you start with, and what kind of result you're looking for? I'm not sure there is a single answer that works for everything for everyone.

Well, adding some context around what is being used for would be nice. On my end I only need either black & white or flat colour conversion since I use vectors for silhouettes and masking.

[Lane]

I could see value in a comprehensive comparison. But maybe let's not one person do that. We could decide on a few images typical of various types of work and each person who already uses a given tool could take the set and run them through their tool and post results. I'm willing to throw a webpage up somewhere showing a comparison chart. Or they could just be a series of thread on this forum.

[v_kyr]

21 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Anyone who has done a quality comparison of the options on this list? Which ones do people think produce the better/worse results?

There are already some older forum threads about the quality and output some vectorization & tracing tools do offer in comparison. Just do an appropriate forum search.

21 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Doesn't it depend strongly on the image you start with, and what kind of result you're looking for? I'm not sure there is a single answer that works for everything for everyone.

That’s entirely right, it always also highly depends on the quality, sort & manner (sharpness, blurry, colors, size, …) of an individual input image. Also how it should be processed in terms of a vectorization type (outline or center-line tracing) and how it will be handled/dealed in terms of color quantization or grey level wise.

[ashf]

On 8/9/2023 at 5:03 AM, Feelmyself said:

Amazing! I didn't realize that Super Vectorizer Pro has all these features. Yes, I got the product when the price was 50% off.   I am very satisfied.

Super Vectorizer Pro is on 50% off sale now.
There are two versions. one is new "AI" version,  one is classic version.
I did not know that there is AI version myself.
I thought its development has stalled since the classic version hasn't been updated for years.

AI
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/super-vectorizer-pro-ai-vector/id1152204742

Classic
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/super-vectorizer-image-to-vector-graphic/id704139979

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, ashf said:

There are two versions. one is new "AI" version,  one is classic version.
I did not know that there is AI version myself.

Though honestly that's just the Pro version and I can‘t see any real AI based additions there. So IMO the AI in it‘s naming means just that it can export to Ai vector format and nothing artificial intelligence specific else here.

[Bit Disappointed]

On 11/1/2023 at 4:44 PM, Lane said:

So I found myself just using vectorizer.ai. From everything I've tried for use with logo type images, it's as good as if I redrew it myself. The minimum number of nodes smartly placed. Downright magically really. It's currently free to use the online converter. Some day I'll need a subscription, which I hate, but I'm really on faced with needing to do a bunch of print to vector logo conversions once a year. I'll probably pony up for one month, and then cancel for the months I'm not using it. 

https://vectorizer.ai

vectorizer.ai IS an outstanding product. I haven't seen anything come close to it. Not only does it produce accurate results I can use straight away but also with few nodes of the right type. I am price model sensitive because I don't use vectorizers much BUT I will be willing to pay more for vectorizer.ai than others because of the quality of the output, the low number of nodes, the right type of nodes and the time I will save using it.

[loukash]

5 hours ago, ashf said:

apps.apple.com/us/app/super-vectorizer-pro-ai-vector/id1152204742

Nice, for 10 bucks a no-brainer purchase. On a quick test it works fast and the results are good.