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AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)


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The thing that irks me a little bit is that Designer replaced DrawPlus which had tracing from about 2010 onwards.

I am not a "power user" and to me Designer seemed a bit of a retrograde step compared to DrawPlus. That's why I went to CorelDraw. It was Corel's crippling of the lower end versions that got me back to Designer.

Just for the hell of it I installed DrawPlus X8 in a Win10 VM yesterday. I was surprised to find that for my usage I could still do everything I needed in just the one package. I must reiterate that I have rather basic needs for a vector design package so the advantages I assume Designer must have over DrawPlus are lost on me.

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This is a feature I'm really missing from AI; having to swap out to an external app to trace raster->vector really slows down the workflow. 

Not sure if Serif staff read this forum but if they do - please add this. For me, its the single tool that is holding me back from wiping AI from my machines.

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9 minutes ago, MrSmmo said:

Not sure if Serif staff read this forum but if they do - please add this.

Serif did say, way back, that they don't want to add this feature until they can do it really well. Much as I would like it, I must say that, if it doesn't work very well, (which IMHO it never did in DrawPlus,) I'd rather wait and carry on doing it in Inkscape. 😉

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At this point, I would assume that this is something that the development team has invested a good amount of time into because it is a very useful feature and would really add value to Designer.  My guess is that it is something they could possibly be holding on to as one of the features they will add in the 2.0 series.  Again, just a guess at this point, but it seems like something that makes sense to have in a vector based graphics software, and by all of the replies in this thread, it is something that the community has been requesting for a very very long time.

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On 11/19/2021 at 7:36 PM, Actionscript said:

At this point, I would assume that this is something that the development team has invested a good amount of time into because it is a very useful feature and would really add value to Designer.  My guess is that it is something they could possibly be holding on to as one of the features they will add in the 2.0 series.  Again, just a guess at this point, but it seems like something that makes sense to have in a vector based graphics software, and by all of the replies in this thread, it is something that the community has been requesting for a very very long time.

You might be right! But what do we want.. is transparency! The current status of a tracing feature - or the stop of developing that feature all together. Or a release with 2.0... doesn't matter, we just want an update after such a long time (7 years alltogether). x)

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1 hour ago, JustRegisteredForAutoTrace said:

You might be right! But what do we want.. is transparency! The current status of a tracing feature - or the stop of developing that feature all together. Or a release with 2.0... doesn't matter, we just want an update after such a long time (7 years alltogether). x)

It sure would be nice to have some more transparency and insight into the roadmap.  I do miss seeing the development roadmap for their software.

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To sum up what users want:

  1. Transparency of currently supported/unsupported features to current and potential users so they can make educated decisions about workflows and programs. Buying a program with the expectation of better workflows and features only to stumble because of a feature that doesn't exist is a huge cause of grievance.
  2. Roadmap so users know which features are being worked on, instead of being left to wonder. If we see something like Android/Chromebook development, or performance improvements in the works, that might make a lot of sense to schedule ahead of development for this feature. Without a roadmap, it just feels like nothing is happening, and every now and then we get a release dropped without the features we want.
  3. SOME kind of community interaction would be massively beneficial. A feature that's requested STRONGLY enough by the community should be given some kind of formal response. 17 pages of replies, over 7 years, for a feature found on most vector-editing programs and required for many workflows, but missing from Affinity, should receive some formal response a little more than "we won't do it unless it's done well," and then silence.
  4. Plugins for new features or filters to be added in by third parties and the community. Not just brushes and textures, but actual code that can allow Affinity to do things it can't otherwise do. This way, the program can expand far beyond the core developer's capacity.
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It's extremely disappointing this feature is still not implemented almost 8 years after the original post.

I've used Inkscape and its trace feature, but Inkscape is crash prone and performs poorly with any slightly complex document (such as traced vectors).

I am not a professional graphic designer, I bought Affinity Designer assuming it would be a tool to cover all of my 'intermediate level user' vector graphics needs. The ability to automatically convert a raster to vector image is absolutely one of them.  I don't expect it to be perfect, I'd be happy with a reliable feature that gives decent results with non-trivial images and saves possibly hours of my time. 

With such feature gaps I struggle to understand how you can call this software "Best in class" when Illustrator is clearly that despite its excessive cost.  I have even seen that this was a feature in the predecessor of Affinity Designer, about a decade ago.  It's bizarre that in the time since and with so many requests it is still missing.

So I've found myself back in Inkscape far more than Designer in the past 6 months.  This is not good!   As such I really don't have many good things to say about Designer when talking with others, yet.  I really hope you Affinity can change that.

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I am very much against autotrace in Affinity as core tool. It's probably quite complex to code and should require decent amount of developers' resources (although perhaps AI can do some game changing stuff here, I'm not the right specialist). There are way more essential tools that need attention.

And there definitely should be 3rd party autotracers in market.

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14 hours ago, ashf said:

For Mac users,
Vector Q(full version with in app purchase) is somehow free now probably for limited time.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vector-q-imaengine/id1448103717

Wow ---- purchased (£0.00) pros: really simple and super quick, nice vector stylisation presets, the pen tool with pressure is super fluid, also has vector perspective distortions YAY! that work great (so can do stuff that's currently impossible in Affinity) ---- cons: no external clipboard so can't copy paste between apps (but export pdf works great)---- it's a little buggy and the prefs window can't be closed ----- still -- this shows loads of promise

Daz1.png

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Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, ashf said:

For Mac users,
Vector Q(full version with in app purchase) is somehow free now probably for limited time.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vector-q-imaengine/id1448103717

Also available for iPad users.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
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13 hours ago, prophet said:

Holy Cow! An amazing little app!

*cough* Buy them Affinity! *cough*

Vector Q - developed by Luis Rivas --- VectorStyler - developed by Csaba Raduly-Baka - two dev talents I'm sure Affinity team are aware of 

Daz1.png

Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.2.1 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.1, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6

Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.2.1

www.bingercreative.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

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On 11/22/2021 at 9:43 PM, Sotalo said:

To sum up what users want:

  1. Transparency of currently supported/unsupported features to current and potential users so they can make educated decisions about workflows and programs. Buying a program with the expectation of better workflows and features only to stumble because of a feature that doesn't exist is a huge cause of grievance.
  2. Roadmap so users know which features are being worked on, instead of being left to wonder. If we see something like Android/Chromebook development, or performance improvements in the works, that might make a lot of sense to schedule ahead of development for this feature. Without a roadmap, it just feels like nothing is happening, and every now and then we get a release dropped without the features we want.
  3. SOME kind of community interaction would be massively beneficial. A feature that's requested STRONGLY enough by the community should be given some kind of formal response. 17 pages of replies, over 7 years, for a feature found on most vector-editing programs and required for many workflows, but missing from Affinity, should receive some formal response a little more than "we won't do it unless it's done well," and then silence.
  4. Plugins for new features or filters to be added in by third parties and the community. Not just brushes and textures, but actual code that can allow Affinity to do things it can't otherwise do. This way, the program can expand far beyond the core developer's capacity.

 

Very good summary! Is there an option to somehow forward this summary to the developer? Because I doubt they ever reach out to this forum or this thread especially...

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On 11/22/2021 at 8:43 PM, Sotalo said:

A feature that's requested STRONGLY enough by the community

That's just an invitation for some people to SHOUT LOUDLY. The forums do not encompass all of Affinity's users, so the voices of those who demand/shout here about so and so feature should not be taken as representative of all users.

While I appreciate that tracing is a useful (some would say needed) feature, I personally have a far greater need for RTL text. I have no reasonable workaround for chunks of RTL text being incorporated into an Affinity work flow. For one or two isolated words here and there I can do it, but not for longer texts.

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Don’t pay for any vector tracing apps. Despite not wanting to use Adobe being the primary reason I began using Affinity in the first place, the solution to all of this for now is very simple: get Adobe Capture. You can export shapes directly to Designer after saving to your Capture library, just hit the ellipsis menu on the image you want to export, chose SVG, and select Designer as the destination app. It’s the quickest, best vector tracing solution period. All you need is a creative cloud account. And if you really want to see Affinity add tracing to Designer get a Creative Cloud subscription and ditch Designer for Illustrator. Haha 😂🤣😂

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7 hours ago, KTDN said:

Don’t pay for any vector tracing apps. Despite not wanting to use Adobe being the primary reason I began using Affinity in the first place, the solution to all of this for now is very simple: get Adobe Capture. You can export shapes directly to Designer after saving to your Capture library, just hit the ellipsis menu on the image you want to export, chose SVG, and select Designer as the destination app. It’s the quickest, best vector tracing solution period. All you need is a creative cloud account. And if you really want to see Affinity add tracing to Designer get a Creative Cloud subscription and ditch Designer for Illustrator. Haha 😂🤣😂

Exactly! I've been using Adobe Capture for the last two years now as my 'go around' technique and this trick works every time. SVG will import to Designer or Publisher, although I recommend the former to be sure so as to save the template. I understand the frustration on the lack of vector trace for Designer and would've like it had they built it in, but for now Adobe Capture is free and does get the job done. 

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Delineate - A Raster/Bitmap to SVG Converter (available through the forum here & Github)

  • runs on all Desktop platforms (Win, Mac, Linux) for which there is a JVM, due to being a Java GUI-frontend
  • (re)uses Potrace (B&W) and Autotrace (Color) tracers, so their algorithms for bitmap to vector tracing
  • supports also center line tracing via Autotrace
  • exports/saves the vectorization results as SVG
  • doesn't need an unecessary creative cloud account 😉

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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On 12/5/2021 at 3:00 AM, KTDN said:

Don’t pay for any vector tracing apps. Despite not wanting to use Adobe being the primary reason I began using Affinity in the first place, the solution to all of this for now is very simple: get Adobe Capture. You can export shapes directly to Designer after saving to your Capture library, just hit the ellipsis menu on the image you want to export, chose SVG, and select Designer as the destination app. It’s the quickest, best vector tracing solution period. All you need is a creative cloud account. And if you really want to see Affinity add tracing to Designer get a Creative Cloud subscription and ditch Designer for Illustrator. Haha 😂🤣😂

1 - Adobe Capture is a mobile app for Android and iOS. It's not available on PC.

2 - App doesn't support exporting 😕 Assets are saved directly to Creative Cloud libraries for use in other programs.

Your solution to this one missing feature doesn't even work in a professional environment, and it's far from an all-in-one package. It costs $600 per year to properly use and you took what is currently a two-program problem and made it three. Meanwhile, there are totally free programs that vectorize in a pro environment with export to any software, not just Adobe.

This workflow is already DOA across many programs. I will continue to use free external software, but having it integrated in Designer would open up a lot of doors to making workflows even better.

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30 minutes ago, Sotalo said:

1 - Adobe Capture is a mobile app for Android and iOS. It's not available on PC.

2 - App doesn't support exporting 😕 Assets are saved directly to Creative Cloud libraries for use in other programs.

Your solution to this one missing feature doesn't even work in a professional environment, and it's far from an all-in-one package. It costs $600 per year to properly use and you took what is currently a two-program problem and made it three. Meanwhile, there are totally free programs that vectorize in a pro environment with export to any software, not just Adobe.

This workflow is already DOA across many programs. I will continue to use free external software, but having it integrated in Designer would open up a lot of doors to making workflows even better.

Please list the totally free programs that vectorize in a pro environment with export to any software - thank you Ken

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