Auto trace

[Richio75]

So are they going to keep ignoring the many people who are asking for the auto trace?

[Petar Petrenko]

26 minutes ago, Richio75 said:

So are they going to keep ignoring the many people who are asking for the auto trace?

Affinity does not ignore anybody. They are just a small team and demands are too many.

[IPv6]

There is vtracer - https://www.visioncortex.org/vtracer/

convert to svg with colors etc...

[Pšenda]

 

As you can see, there are many alternatives to the Autotrace function, i.e. its priority compared to much more important functions (for example vector warp) is understandably lower.

[Ole-André]

Quote

As you can see, there are many alternatives to the Autotrace function, i.e. its priority compared to much more important functions (for example vector warp) is understandably lower.

Even more reason to have tracing in Designer. Every (vector) application I know of has this feature, it's a core function.

It's also not that hard to make, so I see no excuses for not adding it.

[Andy05]

1 hour ago, Ole-André said:

Even more reason to have tracing in Designer. Every (vector) application I know of has this feature, it's a core function.

It's also not that hard to make, so I see no excuses for not adding it.

Seriously, tracing an image (turning a raster image into vectors) is a one-time procedure to be done to an image during the design process. The result will be used in further workflow and in a design/layout. It's not that much of a downside, using dedicated apps for this process. Neither in time needed for this, nor in functionality. 

For me, a design software should provide the steps, which I repeatedly have to do or edit during the workflow of designing/layout. Tracing clearly isn't one of the "constantly repeating steps" one usually needs during a project.

[Valentín Benavente]

Bearing in mind that there are pretty decent free or inexpensive third party options out there, I think it is a waste of time to code it into Designer. In fact, I don't rely on one single tracer, having two already installed plus an online one, as they provide different results. So, for me, having one more tracer built into Designer should be nice, but absolutely not important.

[Ole-André]

2 hours ago, Valentín Benavente said:

Bearing in mind that there are pretty decent free or inexpensive third party options out there, I think it is a waste of time to code it into Designer. In fact, I don't rely on one single tracer, having two already installed plus an online one, as they provide different results. So, for me, having one more tracer built into Designer should be nice, but absolutely not important.

Well, by that reasoning developing Designer is a waste of time since free alternatives exists (Inkscape).

4 hours ago, Andy05 said:

Seriously, tracing an image (turning a raster image into vectors) is a one-time procedure to be done to an image during the design process. The result will be used in further workflow and in a design/layout. It's not that much of a downside, using dedicated apps for this process. Neither in time needed for this, nor in functionality. 

 

And doing that in Designer is the correct workflow, if I need to use third-party applications Designer has failed.

 

It a simple feature request, not hard to implement IMHO.

[Petar Petrenko]

7 minutes ago, Ole-André said:

It a simple feature request, not hard to implement IMHO.

Do you think you can learn in an hour or two to play any instrument only by listening to professional musicians how easy they play?

[Pšenda]

37 minutes ago, NNN said:

Do you think you can learn in an hour or two to play any instrument only by listening to professional musicians how easy they play?

I think that the very fact that there are so many different implementations of the autotrace functionality that provide different and often completely unsatisfactory results, and that there are specialized companies that have made a very good business out of it, clearly points to the fact - that it really not easy to implement. Otherwise, everyone would write the ten lines of code themselves, and not have to turn to a professional solution.

[Andy05]

3 hours ago, Ole-André said:

And doing that in Designer is the correct workflow, if I need to use third-party applications Designer has failed.

Utter nonsense. Using dedicated tools for single special tasks is the correct approach. Not recognising this is failing. I wouldn't want Designer doing 3D renders either, although I need them in quite some of my clients' work.

As @Pšenda already stated—and I agree with the "often completely unsatisfactory" part, which is true for most implemented auto tracing features in other design apps:

2 hours ago, Pšenda said:

I think that the very fact that there are so many different implementations of the autotrace functionality that provide different and often completely unsatisfactory results, and that there are specialized companies that have made a very good business out of it, clearly points to the fact - that it really not easy to implement. Otherwise, everyone would write the ten lines of code themselves, and not have to turn to a professional solution.

Dedicated apps for such tasks, which solely concentrate on creating a useful output, are there for a reason. It's by far not "an easy thing" to implement, otherwise Corel's or  Adobe's built-in vectorisation probably wouldn't fail that often.