Designer V2 and Image Trace

[Frank Asci]

I purchased the new V2 and don't see Image Trace in Designer. With all the marketing buzz for this new set of product upgrades - and the additional cost to your loyal customers - why did you not include image trace? It's been a frequently asked for upgrade. Is it coming soon?

[CB1978]

BIG MISS, imo.  Even the subpar vector software programs have this feature.  

And I hope Affinity Photo adds some AI features soon to keep pace with PS.  If they want to keep cutting into PS, this is a must.  Even if they have to include some of these features as "add-ons" to purchase.  If that's what it takes, I'm good with that.  

[red.foxx15]

On 11/10/2022 at 7:24 PM, Frank Asci said:

I purchased the new V2 and don't see Image Trace in Designer. With all the marketing buzz for this new set of product upgrades - and the additional cost to your loyal customers - why did you not include image trace? It's been a frequently asked for upgrade. Is it coming soon?

Better question. With the list of new features clearly drawn out, why didn't you see it wasn't listed before you purchased version 2?

 

[erikj]

Perhaps that is a good point about not checking the list of features but it doesn't negate the fact that users of this forum have been asking for this feature for quite awhile and like CB1978 stated it's a big miss and a very big disappointment.

[Komatös]

Some functions are not programmed overnight. And for a small company like Serif, it's a cost/benefit question.

Anyone who is self-employed or freelance should know how to take these facts into account.

[loukash]

If only there were a 30-days trial version available so that users still could decide if the new features are worth a purchase…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, wait!

[erikj]

8 hours ago, Komatös said:

Some functions are not programmed overnight. And for a small company like Serif, it's a cost/benefit question.

Anyone who is self-employed or freelance should know how to take these facts into account.

Thank you for clarifying that. My apologies.

I've read many of the whiny requests on the forum strings. Sorry to have lost myself in the whine for one navel-gazing minute.

BTW: Thanks to Serif for adding the Book feature to Publisher 2, that was huge for me.

If I may add my vote for two features in a kinder, more respectful way: Please develop an image trace feature in Designer and a rudimentary epub export for Publisher. Yes, I know there are workarounds available.

Thanks to Serif for their hard work and the opportunity to tune out of the Adobe Suite.

Gratitude.

[lforbes]

I also bought the V2 suite because people said Designer was a vector based tool like Illustrator or Silhouette Design Studio Business, both which have ability to trace raster to Vector. 

However, I am shocked that Designer doesn't have a trace option in it?  I use Silhouette Business for all my tracing but I was trying to replace the Illustrator features as my Illustrator is very old.

I design entirely in Vector for laser and vinyl cutting and I opened a font in Photo only to realize when it put it back in Designer I was unable to point edit it anymore.

[nka]

just to make things clear for people coming here to read this thread.

 

There's no AUTO trace in Affinity Designer (v1 or v2), but you can manually trace ! Logo by Nick (or something like this) has a pretty good tutorial about this on YouTube! :)

[lforbes]

4 hours ago, nka said:

just to make things clear for people coming here to read this thread.

 

There's no AUTO trace in Affinity Designer (v1 or v2), but you can manually trace ! Logo by Nick (or something like this) has a pretty good tutorial about this on YouTube!

So converting from Raster into Vector is a basic function of all other vector based programs. Even Lightburn can trace.   "manually dragging around the vector pen along lines" is not the same as Vector Tracing.  Vector tracing traces shape fill as well.

When they say Designer is a Vector based equivalent of Illustrator or Inkscape, it seems odd that it doesn't have the basic functionality of being able to trace even a black design into a vector.

I typed black words in Designer and they were Vector. I sent to Photo so that I could Mesh Warp as the Mesh Warp is not in Designer, but when I went BACK to Designer, my design was no LONGER Vector, but a raster image.

So it cannot even maintain the vector or convert back to vector when you open it in Photo to warp.

I use the free Silhouette Studio from Silhouette America. This is their Trace feature

I drew this mask in Procreate on my iPad and then traced it to vector.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, lforbes said:

When they say Designer is a Vector based equivalent of Illustrator or Inkscape, it seems odd that it doesn't have the basic functionality of being able to trace even a black design into a vector.

FWIW, Serif has never claimed that. Some users certainly want it to be that but it is not.

1 hour ago, lforbes said:

I typed black words in Designer and they were Vector. I sent to Photo so that I could Mesh Warp as the Mesh Warp is not in Designer, but when I went BACK to Designer, my design was no LONGER Vector, but a raster image.

AD V2 includes vector based mesh warps implemented as Warp Groups. Look for the Deform item at the bottom of the Layers panel.

[nka]

I also use Silhouette studio for tracing stuff, IMO, it's a basic one, but the one that work best for most of my need. 

Else, I use InkScape, but most of time, if it didn't work in Silhouette Studio, it dosent work well in InkScape either.

So, when all fail, I manually trace in AD V2!

there's some very strong software to do tracing, like the one I used to convert a very bad logo to vector (I think it was Vector Magic), but manual conversion work pretty nicely if you do it not too often!

 

My point was not that if it should be include or not in the software (I think it should)... only to point out that it dosent have the AUTO TRACE function, but you can still manually trace in the software.

[v_kyr]

18 hours ago, lforbes said:

When they say Designer is a Vector based equivalent of Illustrator or Inkscape, it seems odd that it doesn't have the basic functionality of being able to trace even a black design into a vector.

Well ADe yet still doesn't have any autotracer build-in, it will hopefully get a good one (incl. centerline tracing options)  in future updates. However in the meantime you've to use third party tracing tools for workarounds, see therefor ...

• List of some third party vectorization & tracing tools

Quote

I typed black words in Designer and they were Vector. I sent to Photo so that I could Mesh Warp as the Mesh Warp is not in Designer, but when I went BACK to Designer, my design was no LONGER Vector, but a raster image.

So it cannot even maintain the vector or convert back to vector when you open it in Photo to warp.

APh's Mesh Warp funtion is build-up and works functional only with raster/pixel/bitmap data, so it can't deal and keep with plain vectors as results. - In order to perform and get real vector based warping distortions, you would have to use ADe v2, since only that new ADe 2 version offers now additional pure vector based distortion functions.

 

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

- In order to perform and get real vector based warping distortions, you would have to use ADe v2, since only that new ADe 2 version offers now additional pure vector based distortion functions.

APub 2 also offers that via Studio Link if you also have AD V2 installed.

[lforbes]

On 12/14/2022 at 7:53 PM, R C-R said:

FWIW, Serif has never claimed that. Some users certainly want it to be that but it is not.

AD V2 includes vector based mesh warps implemented as Warp Groups. Look for the Deform item at the bottom of the Layers panel.

OK. I have V2. I did find it. That definitely wasn't obvious at all so thank you for identifying where to find it. Now to figure out how to pin to the taskbar.

[firstdefence]

16 hours ago, lforbes said:

OK. I have V2. I did find it. That definitely wasn't obvious at all so thank you for identifying where to find it. Now to figure out how to pin to the taskbar.

No pinning to a task anything, although you can assign keyboard shortcuts: Preferences > Shortcuts: Designer: Layer

[lforbes]

7 hours ago, firstdefence said:

No pinning to a task anything, although you can assign keyboard shortcuts: Preferences > Shortcuts: Designer: Layer

No I just realized that for some reason LAYER and WARP GROUP is not an option to Pin to Task toolbar?

That is very weird. I can modify the toolbars for a lot but not that. Too bad.

[HumanMale]

I am honestly surprised it's not implemented; there is open-source knowledge to pull from, and the AI photo tools could be purchased from the acquisition of a startup and open-source software. I do hope they are working on these two features. 

 

[v_kyr]

29 minutes ago, HumanMale said:

...there is open-source knowledge to pull from, and the AI photo tools could be purchased from the acquisition of a startup and open-source software...

Well all of the better open-source vectorizer/tracer algorithms aren't freely reusable in commercial products (check for example the licensing models of Potrace and Autotrace here) and thus would need a paid commercial usage licence fee. - AI tools (re)usage also costs some amount of licensing money, if you didn't already spend billions on those like for example MS, which now incorporates a bunch of AI tool additions from OpenAI's ChatGPT into Bing, Edge, Word ... and so on.

 

Quote

... Microsoft's Bing chat now also supports the LaTeX typesetting system, which is popular for scientific and mathematical work. Mathematical formulas are "now beautifully formatted and easy to read, so you can learn and study in chat mode," tweeted Bing boss Jordi Ribas, who is also responsible for artificial intelligence (AI). The integration is complete and LaTeX is available in the chatbot supported by ChatGPT.

In February, Microsoft announced the integration of OpenAI's ChatGPT into the Bing search engine, thereby helping the language model to access up-to-date content from the Internet and your own searches to get better results. Now the chatbot, which was previously only available in Microsoft's own browser Edge, has been expanded to include LaTeX.

Microsoft has invested several billions in the chat GPT developer OpenAI to strengthen its AI division. In the race for the best information and search results from the Internet, the top dog Google, wants to counteract this with Bard. Allegedly, Google used data from the competition to train its own AI.

 

[Wittles]

So what is my best go-to process flow for a new Affinity Des V2 owner, with the need to auto trace (other than drawing it out manually)?
Is there another tool I can use (purchase) to accomplish just the autotrace?

[dominik]

11 hours ago, Wittles said:

So what is my best go-to process flow for a new Affinity Des V2 owner, with the need to auto trace (other than drawing it out manually)?
Is there another tool I can use (purchase) to accomplish just the autotrace?

Hello @Wittles and welcome to the forum.

I think there is no 'best go-to process' because it all depends on your specific needs. It makes a big difference if you are tracing line-art in comparison to tracing a photo.

A good and free of costs start is to try out Inkscape.

And I suggest you to go through the above referenced list of vectorizer tools. Perhaps you can also provide some examples of what you want to rasterize and some of us can come up with more detailed suggestions.

d.

 

[Wittles]

Yes, you are right @dominik : that was a very broad question considering my aim.

Thank you for the amazing list, however.
I already started to sample Vectornator before I got the list, but I have a lot to learn.

Here's what has me captivated: I want to trace photos to get minimal, artistic line-art.
I am just starting but believe in the Affinity product suite 100% over Adobe.
Until I realized Auto-trace was non-existent. Oh well. Not dissuaded. Leaning into it.

Appreciate any input.
Thanks.

[Gatada]

OK, the most recent posts are about a year old, we now have Affinity Designer 2.4.0..

And I am not sure what is happening, but so far for one image only: when I drag and drop an image into Affinity Designer it traces the shapes in the illustration into vectors—at least some of them!? What?

So far I have tried about 10 other images, and nothing happens.

PS: Bonus Points for those that know what the image is from.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Gatada said:

And I am not sure what is happening, but so far for one image only: it traces the shapes in the illustration into vectors—at least some of them!?

What specifically is the "it" that traces some of the parts of the image into vectors? Can you include this AD V2 file or another one showing the same thing in a reply?

[Gatada]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

What specifically is the "it" that traces some of the parts of the image into vectors? Can you include this AD V2 file or another one showing the same thing in a reply?

"It" is "Affinity Designer", sorry, thought that was clear.