AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)

[Jesse L]

Another +1 to image trace request here.
I am glad to see the Developers say they are working on it; sad to see they don't say when they expect it will be ready.

A month ago I was ready to buy the Affinity software - it looks amazing by the way!
Then I found out it doesn't offer image trace.
I use this feature CONSTANTLY. At least 50% of all of my projects need some kind of image tracing.

It was a deal breaker and I haven't picked up any of the Affinity software still because of this.
I really really want to but if it doesn't image trace, I will just wind up going back to my current apps to do image tracing, which defeats the purpose of doing a migration to the Affinity software.

[SrPx]

Quote

sad to see they don't say when they expect it will be ready.

They would probably love to know that as well... Is not that simple to make an estimation...

[SrPx]

19 hours ago, Jesse L said:

I use this feature CONSTANTLY. At least 50% of all of my projects need some kind of image tracing.

I'm curious about your activity/field/area, and how is that of needing to use auto-tracing in a 50% of your projects' work.

[Jesse L]

14 hours ago, SrPx said:

I'm curious about your activity/field/area, and how is that of needing to use auto-tracing in a 50% of your projects' work.

I work in the printing field.
Reason 1) My clients frequently give us their own artwork.
It is OFTEN terrible - a copy of a copy of... etc
Pass the artwork over with image trace and poof - the image looks (mostly) nice again.

Reason 2) Our products include items made using a Vinyl Cutter / Laser Cutter.
Everything produced from these must be vector.
(Laser engraving can also be done via raster, but not laser cutting)
Anything produced for a customer by raster and later needed in vector format is easily handled with image trace.

Basically, there is a lot of raster stuff out there. If you need it vector, image trace is the multi-use tool to get the job done, or at least partially done.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

Image Vectorizer from the Mac App Store is a good and inexpensive ($5) autotrace application for 1- or 2-color art.

[Jesse L]

6 minutes ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

Image Vectorizer from the Mac App Store is a good and inexpensive ($5) autotrace application for 1- or 2-color art.

Yup. And so is the one I already have.
If I'm going to image trace then I'll use a program that can image trace - makes sense.

But what about buying a new program that doesn't image trace when what I want to do is image trace?
See the problem there?
Honestly it's a little confounding to talk about a program that doesn't do something it should, then the defender tries to support it by offering some other program that can do what the first program should already be doing.

I already said this - the Affinity programs look great, but Affinity Designer SHOULD image trace, it's an integral function to many aspects of design.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@Jesse L

You seem angry and emotionally invested in this. 

Certainly it would be nice to see an auto trace feature built in to Designer, but until it appears, the best course of action for you would be to dismiss Designer as an alternative to your existing tool set and move on.

[Jesse L]

Indeed Mark, I am invested in it.
I heard about Affinity Designer - it was recommended to me by a colleague.
"Have you heard of this new software called Affinity? It's winning all kinds of awards and sounds pretty neat"

So I went and took a look at it and found they are basing their foundation off of software with *No Subscription*  - Well I immediately fell in love as I watched the demos and learned about it's features. It seemed to be the perfect solution for everything I could ask for. So yes, you could say I am invested.
Then as I delve in I see there is no Image Trace --- "What's this?" I say as I double check to see if it's true.
You could equate this to a company that sells tools making a high end toolbox kit [Screwdrivers/saws/etc] and leaving out the hammer; one of the most basic and required tools.

I don't want to move on Mark - I WANT this program. It's great! But I want it to come with the darn hammer!

[BunnyD]

On 11/18/2019 at 7:53 PM, Mark Oehlschlager said:

Image Vectorizer from the Mac App Store is a good and inexpensive ($5) autotrace application for 1- or 2-color art.

Great program. Thanks for the referral.  People who bring up the color vs. B/W issue probably haven't use image trace before and don't realize how incredibly good and useful this app is.

[JET_Affinity]

 

On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 9:41 PM, Jesse L said:

Reason 1) [autotracing amateurish customer-supplied bitmaps]
Reason 2) [autotracing of bitmaps for sign vinyl]

If you need it vector, image trace is the multi-use tool to get the job done, or at least partially done.

There is nothing new about that.

In other words:

Reason 1 is a manifestation of the common "if it's vector, it's good" myth; the misconception that something is gained in the sense of vector-based resolution independence by autotracing a bad bitmap.

Reason 2 is why—ever since the early advent of Gerber vinyl cutters in the sign trade—there are so many signs produced which, when observed up close have very jagged cuts; essentially the same conceptual problem.

In other words (no personal offense intended; as I said these are both very old and common practices) you are (at least partially) in the business of using bad practice to expedite processing of sub-standard originals.

That's not what I want to use Affinity for, and that's not something I want Affinity to be developed for. There are already too many other offering for that. And I'm someone who "grew up" in the sign trade.

I want to use Affinity for professional-quality commercial illustration and design, not for sub-standard vertical-market production workflow. There are already many alternatives for that. It's one of the reasons why Corel Draw became ubiquitous in the US sign trade compared to Illustrator, FreeHand, and Canvas.

There is nothing onerous about using a separate auto-tracing program (if one must) as a switch-to utility for offset print prep. There is nothing onerous about using a dedicated separate utility in a "down and dirty," quick-turnaround production workflow in a sign shop. There are, in fact, advantages to it, just as it can be easily more productive, to use a separate, more powerful, dedicated vinyl cutting application than to use a drawing program plug-in.

There is little new in autotracing. It's a "standalone" function that can easily be accomplished by switching to a dedicated utility. We don't need another "me, too" cheezy autotrace feature in every drawing or design program. That's why autotracing is not even on my wish-list for Affinity.

JET

[v_kyr]

On 11/19/2019 at 3:53 AM, Mark Oehlschlager said:

Image Vectorizer from the Mac App Store is a good and inexpensive ($5) autotrace application for 1- or 2-color art.

Well this one is basically a OSX GUI version from the initial potrace software author's company ...

Quote

Potrace is an open source vector tracer that converts raster to vector graphics. Developed by Peter Selinger, Potrace is dual-licensed: under the GPL and as a Potrace Professional in a proprietary license from Selinger's Icosasoft Software.

... see also the website image-vectorizer.com.

BTW this tool is not to be mixed up with this webbrowser add-on with the same naming "Image Vectorizer (Convert to SVG)", which is based on imagetracerjs.

[Kuttyjoe]

On 11/19/2019 at 10:09 PM, Jesse L said:

You could equate this to a company that sells tools making a high end toolbox kit [Screwdrivers/saws/etc] and leaving out the hammer; one of the most basic and required tools.

I don't want to move on Mark - I WANT this program. It's great! But I want it to come with the darn hammer!

It's not high end though, it's bargain priced.  You can buy tools for $100.00 per tool, or you can buy a whole tool kit full of tools for $19.99, and discounted with a coupon.  LOL  Which toolbox are we talking about here, honestly?  Not that I disagree about the need for the feature.  I just think you are being unrealistic.  For the price, I could imagine that this product is feature complete.  I think that the reason these features aren't being added is because people are buying the product like crazy, without the features.

[Jesse L]

Here are a few things to comment on that I think are being overlooked:

This thread exists within a section of Affinity's forum under "Feature Requests & Suggestions"
- My message is a Feature Request and a suggestion about why it is needed.
None of the feedback / flashback to my comment has provided a justifiable reason to not warrant the addition of the image trace feature.

I have seen the developers mention that an image trace feature is only not currently implemented because they are unhappy with the existing performance of their version of image trace.
In other words, not only is my Feature Request valid, but they agree and have been working on it.

Adding this feature will in no way damage the viability of the program or make it less desirable as @JET_Affinity seems to imply.
It will only make it more desirable because it will service an additional user base. If existing users don't like / want to image trace, then they don't have to.

As for an argument that they should not implement this feature because they charge a comparatively small fee for their software already.
Well I expect that the Affinity team would love it if their software became the premier #1 software used by all designers. They are working to get there from what I can see, by offering what those at the top offer but doing it better. But the Affinity software will never make it to the top if it is missing key components.

We as Users are in an extremely fortunate position with the Affinity team because they are currently working to build their name.
This means we can get their very excellent software for much less than it's actual value.
They are being very smart about their business plan if you ask me.

I keep saying this software looks great, but I think it can still improve, and adding Image Trace is one particular way they can do that.

[JET_Affinity]

 

On ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2019 at 3:58 PM, Jesse L said:

Here are a few things to comment on that I think are being overlooked:

This thread exists within a section of Affinity's forum under "Feature Requests & Suggestions"

Such forum sections exists so that users can not only make suggestions, but also discuss the merits of suggestions. Otherwise, there would be no need for a forum; you would simply submit requests in a one-way "suggestion box."

JET

[fde101]

On 11/23/2019 at 3:58 PM, Jesse L said:

I think it can still improve, and adding Image Trace is one particular way they can do that.

Yes, and I don't think anyone is arguing that point.  The fact is that there are a LOT of feature requests floating around in which people are advocating very strongly that the product should never have been released without it, that they have gone several years without being implemented, that each of them should be the #1 priority, ...

Serif is a relatively small company with limited resources with which to implement these features (one of the reasons they can keep the price as low as it is for this quality of software), so they need to prioritize and select which ones make the most sense to implement in what order.  They have already indicated quite strongly that they are hoping to implement this feature, but that when they do, they want to do it very well and it sounds like they planning on doing it in a very big way; they want to implement each feature with a relatively high level of quality rather than rush to get in lots of features that are half-baked.

That will take time, and with so many other things floating around that are much harder to work around or which are impacting a large number of users, it is quite understandable that this will not happen as quickly as some would like.

In this thread, several options have been suggested on how to go about doing this while waiting for Serif to finally get to the point where they can provide this feature.  That is not because people think it is a bad idea, but because they are being more realistic about the amount of time it will probably take before it happens.

[Kuttyjoe]

At this point, Serif is no longer selling DrawPlus which had this feature.  As I've stated before, it didn't work very well, which is true, but it's not useless.  It's actually possible to get decent results with an image that is not too resolution.  If you can acquire an old copy of it, you can access this feature and several other highly requested features that may or may not ever make it to Affinity Designer.  In the meantime, you can get a copy online for for about $15.00 right now.  I just bought a couple additional licenses because DrawPlus remains a critical tool for me that I can not replace with Affinity Designer or anything else.

Anyway, DrawPlus had vector tracing, a Live Paint Bucket tool, a blob brush, Shape Builder, a True vector eraser, a knife tool, and the brush tools have a much faster workflow than AD.  It would be cool if some other company could take over this software and continue to develop it, but I expect it will suffer the same fate as Freehand.

[chaudhary]

+1 to image trace. Can't entirely migrate to AD for the lack of just that one feature.

[etiennepisano2862]

+1

Thanks!!!

[Ozymandias1972]

Hello,

I just recently acquired Designer and am about to get Publisher soon, but wanted to convey that auto trace or some form of improved trace tool on Designer would be a nice thing and super helpful. I've used Illustrator for years and love it but am looking to wean off it away from the subscription model. Serif is doing a great job with the apps especially the iPad Pro version of Designer which I also have. 

[Carnivorous Tofu]

+1 to Image Trace.

[doodledude]

+1

[meeckle]

+1 to image trace, don't like having to use Draw Plus every time i need to do it.

[Miklo]

+1 For image trace!

[artofsurf]

On 11/17/2019 at 8:16 AM, Jesse L said:

Another +1 to image trace request here.
I am glad to see the Developers say they are working on it; sad to see they don't say when they expect it will be ready.

A month ago I was ready to buy the Affinity software - it looks amazing by the way!
Then I found out it doesn't offer image trace.
I use this feature CONSTANTLY. At least 50% of all of my projects need some kind of image tracing.

It was a deal breaker and I haven't picked up any of the Affinity software still because of this.
I really really want to but if it doesn't image trace, I will just wind up going back to my current apps to do image tracing, which defeats the purpose of doing a migration to the Affinity software.

Auto trace!

How is this not a thing yet?

how much longer until you can program this function?

One of the glaring weaknesses in the program. That and the inability to inline.

every work around I have to go through reminds me that this almost a great program.

I once owned a truck that couldn't drive in reverse.

Today I will be asking my high school son what his work around for auto trace is.

I know he is using the software for a stencil cutter.

 

 

 

[Hmm]

Bought the full pack during the holiday sale, wish I could get my money back since it's bonkers that Affinity isn't competing with Adobe on this feature.

I'm not going back to tracing with the pen tool, Affinity simply isn't an Illustrator competitor without this feature. 

Very disappointed, guess I'll fire up the app in 2021 and see if this nightmare of a thread has been addressed by the developers...