PaoloT Posted November 12, 2022 Share Posted November 12, 2022 While it would be nice to also have an autotrace feature from Serif, it is not as if one can't work without it. InkScape is free, and its SVG files can be loaded in Designer. Two different phases of the project - tracing and further editing. I don't see the huge problem in using two different tools. It is not as if you were forced to restart your PC every time. Paolo IPv6 and Tia Lapis 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 21 hours ago, ThirtyFiveThousand said: Fine. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vectornator-graphic-design/id1219074514 …and it’s free. WOW….THANK YOU 35k….This app looks really robust & polished…I will check it out…..curiously on their YouTube “lesson” page turning a photo into a vector is not an obvious promoted topic ….(but there TONS of others…..) so I wonder how good it is at that since it’s NOT front and center….and the pricing model….can’t fiend any mention of $$ yet….but I’ve just started reading about it. As for Capture they ask you to sign in to your account to access it…..so not happening for me, as I INTENTIONALLY deleted EVERYTHING I had when they started forcing “suites” and then the subscription model…Used my stand alones as long as I could, then Serif/AFFINITY saved the day…. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashf Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 Vectornator's auto trace isn't so good IMO... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThirtyFiveThousand Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 3 hours ago, ashf said: Vectornator's auto trace isn't so good IMO... No, it isn’t. But if creating a placeholder Adobe account so that you can use Capture is just not something you’re into, Vectornator is that old package of cheese crackers in a house without food. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashf Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 VTracer is better in my experience. IPv6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 If this double posts, sorry…..(I’m experiencing a lag and gotta run out) I ran a test with V tracer on this image ( because I could…. quickly ….(with their web demo https://www.visioncortex.org/vtracer/ ) as I thought it would be REALLY easy to do by hand, yet might fool AI because of the similar tones . And an example of something I might do repeatedly to say, create a quick gliph-like representation of something….for me to create a layer, click a button and be 90% THERE with minor clean up would be a big time saver…. I could never get it to separate the hair….. YMMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock Posted November 13, 2022 Share Posted November 13, 2022 👍 on the cheese & crackers…..🤙🏻 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylegb Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 It’s interesting to see folks reply to requests for this feature, saying it’s not important, or that other options exist so stop crying etc. (not in every case). im more of a hand drawn graphics guy. And this is a humongous part of my work flow. Drawing shapes organically and tracing them and using the paint bucket is a super simple and effective way for me personally to work. serif has done an incredible job with their suite. Folks like me just want to see a autotrace or live trace or vectorize feature done well and in the native program. So many other programs with this feature are clunky or ineffective. No one can agree that there is one autotrace to rule them all. This was literally THE feature I had hoped for. I think a lot of the people who counter complain and say it’s not necessary or tel folks to go elsewhere just don’t use it or need it. It IS in fact an important part of a vector workflow for some people, although the fact serif hasn’t put it in yet and may never leaves me wondering if there is something wrong with ME and maybe I just need to learn to do vector design differently. Death of a technique I guess in favor of sameness. Glock, disprint and Cowtoon 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Ess Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 On 11/11/2022 at 4:04 AM, Medical Officer Bones said: InkScape features a quite decent bitmap autotracer, and is free. I installed Inkscape when I couldn't get a perspective warp in Designer. It worked, but now Designer has that feature. Anyway, I've tried the autotracer in Inkscape and am impressed with it. You can do multiple types of tracing and cover them over to Designer as SVG. I was never impressed with the Adobe autotrace. Some years ago I had to mass convert some work I'd done in Clip Studio Paint to vector format and that function (and Illustrator) was a nighmare! Never going back to Adobe, even if the utility's free, cause Inkscape is as well. I made a suggestion last year that they could bundle an autotrace (and general scanning utility) with a materials/image manager. Probably come to naught. Glock 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cowtoon Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 On 11/12/2022 at 10:01 AM, PaoloT said: While it would be nice to also have an autotrace feature from Serif, it is not as if one can't work without it. InkScape is free, and its SVG files can be loaded in Designer. Two different phases of the project - tracing and further editing. I don't see the huge problem in using two different tools. It is not as if you were forced to restart your PC every time. Paolo You seem to miss the point, as an important tool in illustration (and time saving) Serif should have already inluded it, it's not like people are asking for something impossible and a function people seem to want, "nice to have" as you say even for you. disprint, Laura Ess and Glock 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThirtyFiveThousand Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 21 hours ago, Glock said: If this double posts, sorry…..(I’m experiencing a lag and gotta run out) I ran a test with V tracer on this image ( because I could…. quickly ….(with their web demo https://www.visioncortex.org/vtracer/ ) as I thought it would be REALLY easy to do by hand, yet might fool AI because of the similar tones . And an example of something I might do repeatedly to say, create a quick gliph-like representation of something….for me to create a layer, click a button and be 90% THERE with minor clean up would be a big time saver…. I could never get it to separate the hair….. YMMV. Until you win your state lottery, purchase Serif and fund the Trace project yourself, there’s always Adobe Capture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 I also agree that I would like to see Serif take the requests for auto tracing more seriously and prioritise it for a future upgrade (preferably an update to V2 to we don't have to wait years!) When I am creating surface pattern designs, I turn complex organic textures from photographs into vector texture backgrounds for visual interest, as well as hand-drawn marks into vector. I do this with a third-party option currently, but it breaks my "flow" and is annoying going back and forth. When you use vector tracing regularly, the extra time adds up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThirtyFiveThousand Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 1 hour ago, Laura Ess said: I installed Inkscape when I couldn't get a perspective warp in Designer. It worked, but now Designer has that feature. Anyway, I've tried the autotracer in Inkscape and am impressed with it. You can do multiple types of tracing and cover them over to Designer as SVG. I was never impressed with the Adobe autotrace. Some years ago I had to mass convert some work I'd done in Clip Studio Paint to vector format and that function (and Illustrator) was a nighmare! Never going back to Adobe, even if the utility's free, cause Inkscape is as well. I made a suggestion last year that they could bundle an autotrace (and general scanning utility) with a materials/image manager. Probably come to naught. I’m iPad Pro, so no Inkscape for me. I rely on Capture for the majority of my vector tracing. Vectornator is its closest competitor, and it is meh at the best of times. I know having the function built in could probably be a lot more convenient, but as a mobile user, I’m accustomed to switching apps in the name of limited memory management. Plus having one app dedicated to one thing minimizes the UI clutter in a lot of cases, imo Out of curiosity, where did Adobe Capture drop the ball for you? Was it being a standalone thing that got in the way? The UI? The Adobe trying to get you to use their cloud service for everything? Where’d they lose you? 🏈 PaoloT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 53 minutes ago, ThirtyFiveThousand said: Until you win your state lottery, purchase Serif and fund the Trace project yourself, there’s always Adobe Capture. 35k, Thanks for taking the time to do that…It IS better than Vtrace but as you said not great…..I’d still be WAY faster by hand….SOOOO (I) we wait, and I try yet another “workaround” which seems like an unnecessary PITA after all this time….I was an early adopter of Affinity and luckily for me closer to the end, than the beginning, of my career…. FWIW, since I was around for the pleasure and pain of the transition to digital ( and I had to walk 27 miles to school in hurricanes & blizzards in the dark while dodging wild animals) so, this is a minor bitch fest for me in the Grand Scheme of things…. BTW…should I win a lottery….the biggest obligation I will feel, is choosing the right flip flops to wear, and which break to surf that day….not making the World a better place for my much loved creative brothers and sisters. …..Though there will always be a pitcher of Margaritas in the freezer for y’all…..(guaranteed they won’t freeze….) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 5 hours ago, Kylegb said: This was literally THE feature I had hoped for. I think a lot of the people who counter complain and say it’s not necessary or tel folks to go elsewhere just don’t use it or need it. It IS in fact an important part of a vector workflow for some people, although the fact serif hasn’t put it in yet and may never leaves me wondering if there is something wrong with ME and maybe I just need to learn to do vector design differently. Death of a technique I guess in favor of sameness. Nothing wrong with you brother….I think most ALL of us here kept thinking that WITH EACH UPDATE it would appear….it may be superfluous for some, but for me too, IT was the ONE THING I’ve felt was a gaping hole in an otherwise very cool productive workflow. Come on Serif….at least give us a beta…… Cowtoon 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Przemja Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 3 hours ago, Glock said: Nothing wrong with you brother….I think most ALL of us here kept thinking that WITH EACH UPDATE it would appear….it may be superfluous for some, but for me too, IT was the ONE THING I’ve felt was a gaping hole in an otherwise very cool productive workflow. Come on Serif….at least give us a beta…… Much as I'd like to have an auto trace feature built in - it seems that this would require serious machine learning techniques (and even adobe, with all their ML push, right now struggles with that particular task). I'd sooner expect a relatively good auto trace from the likes of Dall-e, midjourney, etc. Vectornator works ok-ish only with pure black and white sketches (and only with solid continous lines at that). For more complicated traces, for me, it actually is faster to trace "by hand" in designer on ipad (vs vectornator + cleanup in designer)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Ess Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 10 hours ago, ThirtyFiveThousand said: Out of curiosity, where did Adobe Capture drop the ball for you? Was it being a standalone thing that got in the way? The UI? The Adobe trying to get you to use their cloud service for everything? Where’d they lose you? 🏈 THE CLOUD and SUBSCRIPTIONS!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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