Using Affinity Designer or Photo to digitize a drawing

[Aftershaft]

Hi,

I just read some steps on how to do so in a book about drawing florals.  She explains that she uses a scanner and Adobe Illustrator and steps to digitize her drawings.  Can I do this in Affinity Designer or Photo?

To summarize, here are some of her steps in Illustrator after scanning the image and placing it in a document:

-Image Trace which will vectorize the object
-Adjust levels to get the image as close as possible to the original artwork (adjust using Corners and Noise, move Paths up, adjust the Threshold, check Ignore White which will leave only the lines visible and make the background transparent)
-Then she selects Trace
-Next is Expand which allows editing of the lines of the object and creates paths or vectors of the image to make it editable
-Now she can change the colors, etc of various parts of the image

How can I get something I drew into Affinity so I can edit it?  She suggests just using a black pen or marker and colorizing it in Illustrator.  I have lots of extra-fine point colored markers but maybe I don't need them after all 😞

Thanks!

[walt.farrell]

The Affinity apps do not provide Image Tracing. There are many alternatives, some free, that do provide it. You can use one of them and import the results into the Affinity applications.

Alternatively, after scanning your drawing and opening the raster image that will produce, you could trace over it manually using the Paint Brush Tool (Photo) or the Vector Brush Tool (Designer) or the Pencil Tool (Designer or Photo). Or the Pen Tool in either, but I find that more complex.

Which approach you choose may depend on the complexity of your drawing.

Other users will probably have additional advice  

[Aftershaft]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

The Affinity apps do not provide Image Tracing. There are many alternatives, some free, that do provide it. You can use one of them and import the results into the Affinity applications.

Alternatively, after scanning your drawing and opening the raster image that will produce, you could trace over it manually using the Paint Brush Tool (Photo) or the Vector Brush Tool (Designer) or the Pencil Tool (Designer or Photo). Or the Pen Tool in either, but I find that more complex.

Which approach you choose may depend on the complexity of your drawing.

Other users will probably have additional advice  

So nice to hear from you again Walt!

If I end up deciding to do this more than once, I am going to be forced to subscribe to Adobe Illustrator as this is just too much work with too many steps.

Thanks!

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, PaulWilliamson said:

If I end up deciding to do this more than once, I am going to be forced to subscribe to Adobe Illustrator as this is just too much work with too many steps.

Have you tried one of the free apps that will handle it for you? You may prefer that to paying for Illustrator, and you may find it works acceptably.

[Aftershaft]

11 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Have you tried one of the free apps that will handle it for you? You may prefer that to paying for Illustrator, and you may find it works acceptably.

>>Alternatively, after scanning your drawing and opening the raster image that will produce, you could trace over it manually using the Paint Brush Tool (Photo) or the Vector Brush Tool (Designer) or the Pencil Tool (Designer or Photo). Or the Pen Tool in either, but I find that more complex.

Which approach you choose may depend on the complexity of your drawing.<<

The above is too tedious and time consuming, especially if I have dozens of little drawings as I plan on having.  Those four tools have a big learning curve and take a lot of practice to get good enough at them.  Even if one of the free apps does a good job to make a good starting point, I am still going to have to spend a lot of time completing the project.

I will draw something and try out one of the freebies in a little while.

Thanks Walt!

 

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

And please let us know how you get on, as it may help someone else  

[wonderings]

Illustrator is not the greatest when it comes to tracing. If that is a big part of what you need to do I would seriously give Corel a try. They have a demo and they have a non subscription option. At our print shop whenever we needed to trace something we jumped over to the PC to use Corel. 

[Aftershaft]

56 minutes ago, wonderings said:

Illustrator is not the greatest when it comes to tracing. If that is a big part of what you need to do I would seriously give Corel a try. They have a demo and they have a non subscription option. At our print shop whenever we needed to trace something we jumped over to the PC to use Corel. 

Oh!  So you think it would do good for this?  Great!  I assume you mean CorelDraw.  And it is $300 compared to $23 a month for Illustrator.  They both have trials so I will try both.

Thanks for your help and insight!

-pw

[Aftershaft]

I changed my display name to Aftershaft by the way so my real name isn't spammed by Google, etc...  Not sure if it will make a difference.  I was using Philoplume recently and Filoplume a long time ago but no this forum software makes me sign on using my real name.  It did not allow me to change my display name to those (of course).

Any way - they are all names for the same feather! 🙂

[wonderings]

15 hours ago, Aftershaft said:

Oh!  So you think it would do good for this?  Great!  I assume you mean CorelDraw.  And it is $300 compared to $23 a month for Illustrator.  They both have trials so I will try both.

Thanks for your help and insight!

-pw

From experience Corel is better for tracing. And with the pricing it is a mixed bag. One time charge of $300 for Corel, and $23 continuous for Adobe. $23 x 12 = $276 for one year, and on going to keep using it. I think it is worth it if you are making your living with the software, but if you are more on the hobby side or side work on occasion I think it is better to stay away from a subscription model. Affinity really is a great set of software, and worth the price, might be worth investing in both. I find Corel strange to work in, whereas Affinity is closer to Adobe in how they do things and feels much more natural to me. 

[thomaso]

21 hours ago, Aftershaft said:

How can I get something I drew into Affinity so I can edit it?  She suggests just using a black pen or marker and colorizing it in Illustrator.  I have lots of extra-fine point colored markers but maybe I don't need them after all 😞

In case the replies above didn't answer that question yet: If your drawing is analogue (physical pen, paper) you may import it as scan or photo and edit it with the according tools for pixel selection, fill colour or recolour options. If the drawing was created digitally in a non-Affinity app you may export it as PDF and open it in Affinity to access and edit its various elements separately.

[Aftershaft]

2 hours ago, wonderings said:

From experience Corel is better for tracing. And with the pricing it is a mixed bag. One time charge of $300 for Corel, and $23 continuous for Adobe. $23 x 12 = $276 for one year, and on going to keep using it. I think it is worth it if you are making your living with the software, but if you are more on the hobby side or side work on occasion I think it is better to stay away from a subscription model. Affinity really is a great set of software, and worth the price, might be worth investing in both. I find Corel strange to work in, whereas Affinity is closer to Adobe in how they do things and feels much more natural to me. 

Thank you.  I am a very loyal Affinity user!  I will see what I can do using the suggestions here.

[Aftershaft]

>>n case the replies above didn't answer that question yet: If your drawing is analogue (physical pen, paper) you may import it as scan or photo and edit it with the according tools for pixel selection, fill colour or recolour options.<<

They would just be little trout flies for now.  Something for stationary, notepads,....  But I may want to do other kinds too like try drawing the flowers in the book I described. Maybe even cartoons.

I do have an iPad, and I do have a couple of Wacom tablets in addition to XP Pen tablets (I use a Windows PC).  I would rather "draw" by hand.

Thanks!

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Aftershaft]

41 minutes ago, lacerto said:

Your prices are outdated, CorelDRAW perpetual license is USD 549 and for European customers EUR 779 (incl. VAT), and there is no monthly based subscription as there is for AI (USD 34.49 no yearly contract). Both apps have pretty impressive tracing capabilities, and lots of power in editing afterwards (e.g. in terms of recoloring), and in my experience there is no clear winner. For just single vectorizing jobs I would use services like vectorizer.ai (now off beta and commercial. but still very economical), but if there are post-vectorizing editing tasks like recoloring I would choose either of these two. Illustrator has probably better community support and up-to-date real-world instructions for carrying out similar tasks.  

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

Your prices are outdated....

It appears that the OP is talking about CorelDRAW Standard (Windows only), not the considerably more expensive suite (available for Macs as well).

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Aftershaft]

On 8/20/2024 at 2:52 PM, lacerto said:

. For just single vectorizing jobs I would use services like vectorizer.ai

Smallest plan is $10 a month which I think is 50 max scans (fine by me).  I uploaded a sample file but cannot look at what it did because I have to sign-up for a plan.

Thanks

[Aftershaft]

On 8/19/2024 at 12:58 PM, walt.farrell said:

Have you tried one of the free apps that will handle it for you? You may prefer that to paying for Illustrator, and you may find it works acceptably.

I have Inkscape.  I always have "hated" it because of the user interface and how it works.  I just wasted almost an hour playing around with it with an image.

There are so many on that list that I am not going to keep trying them with trial and error.  Autotracer looks promising but when I open the SVG it created in AD2 it seems like every millimeter is a layer!! I am not going to try any more.  Vectorizer won't let me see the results unless I pay $10/month for the minimum plan so forget that one.

Thanks Walt.

-pw

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

[Aftershaft]

I used Canva Pro Free Trial to convert the jpg to an svg and now I can use it in Affinity Designer 2 as a vector file and so I can resize it.  Doesn't look like there are many layers that I can edit color, etc.. with though.  Although Canva didn't trace the image (not sure if that is possible) it still exported it to a svg file.

However the on-line AutoTracer did convert it to a SVG with lots of layers/objects in AD2 but sort of gobbledygook as to what is what 🙂

I wonder if Canva is going to add this feature to Affinity Designer some day?

[R C-R]

21 minutes ago, Aftershaft said:

Although Canva didn't trace the image (not sure if that is possible) it still exported it to a svg file.

SVG files can contain raster objects instead of or in addition to vector objects, so it may be that it is just a single ayer raster image.

[Aftershaft]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

SVG files can contain raster objects instead of or in addition to vector objects, so it may be that it is just a single layer raster image.

 

Oh!  I bet that is it.  Never heard of that.  I don't know about stuff like that! Is there a better format?  Besides making what I make a vector so I can resize it, I would like to be able to change colors, etc... after it is scanned.

[lacerto]

Obsolete.

[Aftershaft]

1 hour ago, lacerto said:

I was just trying to be helpful, there are so many similar services that you are likely to find one that suits you better, even free one, but I wanted to recommend something that I know does a good job...

I wish I could use it!!!  Thanks!