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AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector) in Affinity Designer V2?


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No, it's not included.

If it had been added it would have been advertised as a new function.

-- Walt
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  • 1 month later...
4 minutes ago, Jany said:

ill not update if this will not change.

Okie-dokie, I'm sure they're gettin' right on this!! Probably have a new release out by noon time... 🤣

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6 minutes ago, Jany said:

If you will not vote with your money, nothing will change. 

You really believe that? We don't know what Serif has been working on, that is yet to be released in this version. Features that were not present in V1, are just the starting point for those. They know there's a lot of work to be done on them. There's more features to come, they just need to make sure or try anyway, those new features and other bugs have been addressed.

The MSIX installer, threw a big monkey-wrench in their timeline, having to drop back and work up an MSI installer.

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9 hours ago, Jany said:

If you will not vote with your money, nothing will change. 

Actually, all that really matters is if enough people find the product useful enough to justify its cost, even if it does not do everything they want or would like. That is as true for Adobe or any other company as it is for Serif.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I recently transitioned to Affinity apps as I can't justify subscribing to Adobe ones. I'm not a graphics pro, just a businessman who occasionally needs to create promo materials, logos, etc. 

Been working on a new logo, so starting to learn a bit about how Designer, Publisher are similar/different to the analogous Adobe products, which I use to occasionally use. So, today I went looking for an 'auto trace' function, and now see there (apparently), isn't one. Not a deal breaker, but a bit disappointing. I'm no software coder and don't know how difficult this would be to implement, but I'll add my voice to those who would definitely like to see this in one of their apps.

In the mean time, yeah, I guess there are online tools...and I'll probably just use the Pen tool to trace it, since it's not that complex of an image. 

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7 minutes ago, davepete said:

but I'll add my voice to those who would definitely like to see this in one of their apps.

The best place to do that is in the Feedback & Features forums. Here in the Questions forum, it is not likely to get the attention of the developers.

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Sadly…..this has been requested AD NAUSEAUM for MANY years……annnnddddd this horse has been beat to death in previous forums…it isn’t in V2 and there have been anecdotal comments to the effect that developers don’t see it as a greatly desired function (Which is BS)…and that it wont even be considered until they feel they have a viable reliable tool. Somewhat believable….as it doesn’t appear to be EASY  to do……

Others have suggested existing specialized apps out there that are “just fine”…. I have not found anything that works WELL…..certainly not as WELL as Illustrators’ implementation.

so I wouldn’t plan on seeing it anytime soon…..

 

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45 minutes ago, davepete said:

I recently transitioned to Affinity apps as I can't justify subscribing to Adobe ones. I'm not a graphics pro, just a businessman who occasionally needs to create promo materials, logos, etc. 

Been working on a new logo, so starting to learn a bit about how Designer, Publisher are similar/different to the analogous Adobe products, which I use to occasionally use. So, today I went looking for an 'auto trace' function, and now see there (apparently), isn't one. Not a deal breaker, but a bit disappointing. I'm no software coder and don't know how difficult this would be to implement, but I'll add my voice to those who would definitely like to see this in one of their apps.

In the mean time, yeah, I guess there are online tools...and I'll probably just use the Pen tool to trace it, since it's not that complex of an image. 

Also fwiw….after spending COUNTLESS hours becoming adept at using a pen tool and “paths” in PS for complex selections…years ago out of necessity and SHEER FRUSTRATION….the effort paid off and I find I am MUCH better and FASTER than ANY automated attempt I’ve tried….

but for multiple basic repeatable simple everyday selections/conversions a working ai tool would be invaluable.

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22 minutes ago, Glock said:

…it isn’t in V2 and there have been anecdotal comments to the effect that developers don’t see it as a greatly desired function (Which is BS)…

Those comments are not accurate. The developers never said it was not a desired feature, only that they were not interested in implementing it in-app unless they could do it better than the existing third party tools can. What exactly that means we can only guess at but I assume it would somehow involve tracing that acted more like humans do tracing manually.

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It's the kind of thing I don't need to do often but yeah, I remember some years ago learning to use the Pen tool in Illustrator to outline things. It's pretty amazing/cool once you learn all the keyboard shortcuts, etc., so you can start to "fly the plane." But now I'm having to dredge that stuff up, plus learn how it's different in Designer.
Speaking of that...how do you join two points in Designer?

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55 minutes ago, Glock said:

Others have suggested existing specialized apps out there that are “just fine”…. I have not found anything that works WELL…..certainly not as WELL as Illustrators’ implementation.

Don't know if Illustrator changed their build-in vectorization tool (... in the past it was a seperate bundled one) and what it produces nowadays for results, but I wasn't much impressed from what I've seen in the past from Illu based vectorizations, those were mediocre, if not to say awkful at best.

Further I've not seen much outstanding new tracing algorithms, most things are based on older long time before developed third party things here (like potrace & autotrace) and thus is reused in non-commercial apps.

down.jpg.a0684972a0403d158338a119205c74b7.jpg

  • SV2

down2.jpg.12154c2e3ab8bd5d0ea34d26b9e79686.jpg

  • Vector Magic

down3.jpg.222a5fd28bd0b70aecfddcf1a2a6778a.jpg

And here's the initial used JPG test image ...

01.jpg.f3793333939fc31f7c01cc53e3960e72.jpg

... now somebody can maybe show what an actual Illustrator versions tracer can make out of this.

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I cant tell what your needs are with regard to vectorization mine were essentially creating masks or selections…. isolating and extracting objects from photos and creating glyphs or glyph like renderings …line drawings like a coloring book….for storyboards or whatever….  …I can’t tell from above examples what it is you are trying select or isolate….

Heres a thread on the topic from the launch announcement of V2 and below is a “simple” test I used to ascertain how well various vectorizing apps from this thread worked….one that I could quickly knock our by hand…the sample below is “VTracer” I believe…and it is better than the some of the others….I have not touched Adobe in more than a decade. F THEM.

 

 

image.png

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55 minutes ago, Glock said:

Looks like the thread link didn’t post…

I've already saw that thread some time ago and it doesn't tell much here about the different tracer apps and vector apps build-in tracers vectorization accuracy/quality. - What I've shown you above is overall the more difficult part for tracers here in contrast to ...

Quote

...mine were essentially creating masks or selections…. isolating and extracting objects from photos and creating glyphs or glyph like renderings...

Since those tracers I've shown above can do that either way here, as far as you load in those image portions you're interested in. - Further and this applies to all tracers, the better quality and clearer/cleaner etc. an initial bitmap/image pixels & lines are (...so overall the better an input bitmaps quality is), the better can a tracing algorithm also determine what continious pixels to trace here and thus also build overall better vector paths out of that. - Meaning, from a bad blurred and too small input bitmap/image one can't expect wonders from tracers then!

And related to Affinity Designer, if they implement and add a tracing facility (...which would be highly welcome), I would expect that one then to give at least the quality results of Potrace and additionally to also support center line tracing. - And on demand sometime then ideally also some node amount generation settings (node optimizations) for the vectorization.

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6 hours ago, davepete said:

there (apparently), isn't one

At least not officially.

Inofficially, there is a rudimentary one, and it was there since years, except that apparently no one really noticed yet: 

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2 hours ago, Kauna - Design said:

Hi

I can recommend this auto trace app. It is part of the Imag-R program which is free and can Vectorize images to SVG files.
After I found it, I was able to delete CorelDraw 2021 so now I only use Affinity Designer 2 and Imag-R

https://www.imag-r.com/vectorize
 

 

Thank You so much for posting this ….Yet another great possibility… it looks pretty robust, so I’ll have to put some time aside to really explore this and the previous option….But very happy to HAVE options!

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3 hours ago, Kauna - Design said:

Hi

I can recommend this auto trace app. It is part of the Imag-R program which is free and can Vectorize images to SVG files.
After I found it, I was able to delete CorelDraw 2021 so now I only use Affinity Designer 2 and Imag-R

https://www.imag-r.com/vectorize
 

 

But it only vectorises to black and white; very limited and although the vectorise is free and I can see why, it's very basic, its a subscription based model for more features whether that be online or offline.

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12 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Don't know if Illustrator changed their build-in vectorization tool (... in the past it was a seperate bundled one) and what it produces nowadays for results, but I wasn't much impressed from what I've seen in the past from Illu based vectorizations, those were mediocre, if not to say awkful at best.

Further I've not seen much outstanding new tracing algorithms, most things are based on older long time before developed third party things here (like potrace & autotrace) and thus is reused in non-commercial apps.

down.jpg.a0684972a0403d158338a119205c74b7.jpg

  • SV2

down2.jpg.12154c2e3ab8bd5d0ea34d26b9e79686.jpg

  • Vector Magic

down3.jpg.222a5fd28bd0b70aecfddcf1a2a6778a.jpg

And here's the initial used JPG test image ...

01.jpg.f3793333939fc31f7c01cc53e3960e72.jpg

... now somebody can maybe show what an actual Illustrator versions tracer can make out of this.

Ends up black and white, it's a one button no settings affair.

317398705_Screenshot2023-01-25at08_57_25.png.22da46f87fdff4405b5e6e58c543bac1.png

01.jpg.f3793333939fc31f7c01cc53e3960e72.svg

01.jpg.f3793333939fc31f7c01cc53e3960e72.ai

iMac 27" 2019 Sequoia 15.0 (24A335), iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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4 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Ends up black and white, it's a one button no settings affair.

Looks like a reuse of the Potrace algorithm, which has been translated from C into/for a bunch of other prog languages routines too (GitHub is full of such ports).

Here's how a default Potrace will trace that, also in B/W (via the DragPotrace GUI for Potrace)...

drag-potrace.jpg.c692d6045c08755e7d34d1cee0b97701.jpg

 

And here's what Vtracer makes out of it ...

vtracer-online.jpg.f42e598566ee66a37412719b881fc242.jpg

 

 

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
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