AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)

[danvsjr]

Or, after all these years of feature requests, they could just replicate Illustrator's Image Trace tool. We could stop this foolish journey of workarounds. Yes, it took Adobe several versions to include in Illustrator. Corel Draw had it years before Adobe. I used their raster to vector conversions in the early 1990's. Affinity has a good vector app with Designer and a good raster app with Photo. They have all the parts and knowledge needed. 

[JokerMartini]

I need this feature....come on affinity!!! please

[dominik]

5 hours ago, JokerMartini said:

I need this feature....come on affinity!!! please

Did you read this post?

There are many options that you can use right away. No need to wait until Serif comes up with a solution 🙂

d.

[spidermurph]

Serif already has a very good Autotrace in their legacy program DrawPlus.

Try to get your hands on a copy of that. You will not be dissapointed it is an amazing program.

[PaulEC]

56 minutes ago, spidermurph said:

Serif already has a very good Autotrace in their legacy program DrawPlus.

To be quite honest, that's really a matter of opinion. I always found Autotrace in DrawPlus to be absolute rubbish. It was always either inaccurate or produced enormous files. Yes, Autotrace in AD would be very nice, but I'd rather wait a bit longer for Serif to get it right, than have a "quick fix" that doesn't work properly. As others have said, there are alternatives, personally I use Inkscape (which is free) when I need to use Autotrace.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, spidermurph said:

Try to get your hands on a copy of [DrawPlus].

Please note that DrawPlus is a Windows-only application, and now that Serif are no longer selling it they won’t try to provide a fix if a future Windows update breaks something.

[Catshill]

21 hours ago, PaulEC said:

To be quite honest, that's really a matter of opinion. I always found Autotrace in DrawPlus to be absolute rubbish.

It does need careful tweaking of the settings and depending on the source file, I find it can do a reasonable job but of course YMMV...

[dreamdancer]

On 10/18/2020 at 10:30 PM, dominik said:

Did you read this post?

There are many options that you can use right away. No need to wait until Serif comes up with a solution 🙂

d.

Thank You! I just bought Image Vectorizer and it works well. I needed to trace a bitmap image for a project and was forced to use AI on my oldest computer. Not fun. I came here to find out if Affinity Designer was going to be able to do that, Image Vectorizer is just what I needed.

[lenogre]

VectorStyler can also convert picture in vectors.

Only for mac.

Free (until … ?).

The perfect companion of Designer.

[fde101]

11 hours ago, lenogre said:

Free (until … ?).

Until it is out of beta and the time limit on the last distributed beta has passed.

[Stephen_H]

On 10/19/2020 at 7:30 AM, dominik said:

There are many options that you can use right away. No need to wait until Serif comes up with a solution 🙂

d.

I think the point is that most of the 334 posts in this discussion, is that we want Affinity Designer to be that option. We don't want to turn to other apps. We should be turning from Inkscape to Aff Designer, not the other way around.

What if all Aff Designer users downloaded the free, opensource Inkscape just to trace their scans, and then discover that Inkscape is a better app? Simple rule of business: Never send your clients to your opposition, because they might not come back...

[dominik]

11 minutes ago, Stephen_H said:

What if all Aff Designer users downloaded the free, opensource Inkscape just to trace their scans, and then discover that Inkscape is a better app? Simple rule of business: Never send your clients to your opposition, because they might not come back...

Of course you can see it that way but then everyone sits there and does not get anything converted to vector at all. I on my behalf don't consider myself a salesperson for Serif 🙂

There is nothing wrong with asking for this feature. But it doesn't speed up anything. The point is made that there is a demand for this feature and Serif have their reasons why it is not there yet.

Cheers,
d.

[Stephen_H]

As a quick solution, what I'd advise to Affinity is to not try and integrate all features into their current apps. They should make them standalone utilities.

A standalone tracing app using opensource code from Inkscape, just with an Affinity "skin" applied to it that exports Affinity native files, would get the job done fine. Affinity could even charge $5 for it rather than adding it as a feature for free which will frustrate everyone with its slow delivery and impact on earnings. If you think it's important, I'm sure you'd happily pay a measly $5 for it. Instead we wait patiently for its turn to come around in the features roadmap where a developer is going to lovingly integrate it into Designer and probably spends months troubleshooting it because it's conflicting with something in Publisher due to the shared file formats.

I think Adobe has already done this:  "Save for web", "Filter gallery", "Liquify mode" and "Raw photo developer"... all of which feel like standalone apps with their own interfaces. They feel like they were purchased from third parties and shoe-horned into Photoshop. Years later, they still sit on the fringes and no-one seems to have noticed, or even seems to care. Coel Draw definitely did this. It was called Corel Trace and was an app, not a feature in Draw.

I think a range of "Pro level utilities" would be a great money-spinner for Affinity while we wait for v2 of everything to be released.

I'd be willing to pay $50 just for an app that will allow me to proof a repro-ready PDF. Just give me the ability to view each colour channel individually to confirm over printing, knockout, spot colours, colour mode. Add listing image resolution, profiles, dimensions, PDF versions etc and I'd trust ALL repro files coming out of Affinities apps. This wouldn't be something all users would need or want, so make it an optional extra.

[dominik]

1 hour ago, Stephen_H said:

They should make them standalone utilities.

A standalone tracing app using opensource code from Inkscape, just with an Affinity "skin" applied to it that exports Affinity native files, would get the job done fine.

I appreciate your way to provide constructive input for a quick solution. But honestly I don't think Serif will be going that route. I think so because a Serif representative once posted (quite a while ago): 'We will only introduce it when we feel the results are good enough.' This does not sound like they are going to wrap around some Affinity-GUI taken from something that is part of Inkscape.

Source:

They have a strong vision on how they develop their suite and one of the key features is the Personas. So it is much more likely that we will see a Vectorizer Persona at some time instead of a stand alone application. Another 'proof' for this is the new 'Astrophotography Stack' Persona that was introduced with the latest Mac beta of APh.

See here: 

Anyway, it is an interesting topic and I am really curious about what we will see eventually 🙂

d.

[ra.skill]

+1 for "Image Trace", bring it Affinity

[Naofel]

Hello, I'm guessing most of you have already seen this.

Differentiable Vector Graphics Rasterization for Editing and Learning

For those that haven't take a look. It's a new method of image vectorisation.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Naofel

[moi.cool]

2021 +1

[Andy0]

July 2014 this thread started and still nothing from Serif on adding this function, despite some good points being made - such as you already had this in DrawPlus, Inkscape and Illustrator have the function, etc., etc.

As far as I can see, Serif's position is "Use an alternative bit of software as recommended by other users". Not sure that's good for business.

If Serif isn't going to add something designers expect to find in Designer when they buy it (like I did) - and are used to having it in other vector drawing programs - can you at least tell us why not?

It's not the only [seemingly] simple enhancement that I'd like to see; both tracing and moving both handles of a node simultaneously and symmetrically is managed by Inkscape (free, btw), so I am struggling to understand why Serif seems to just focus on bug-hunting rather than enhancing the designer's experience. Ultimately, it means I use Affinity Designer less and less, which is a shame, because I love it.

[Paul Wild]

20 hours ago, Andy0 said:

July 2014 this thread started and still nothing from Serif on adding this function, despite some good points being made - such as you already had this in DrawPlus, Inkscape and Illustrator have the function, etc., etc.

As far as I can see, Serif's position is "Use an alternative bit of software as recommended by other users". Not sure that's good for business.

If Serif isn't going to add something designers expect to find in Designer when they buy it (like I did) - and are used to having it in other vector drawing programs - can you at least tell us why not?

It's not the only [seemingly] simple enhancement that I'd like to see; both tracing and moving both handles of a node simultaneously and symmetrically is managed by Inkscape (free, btw), so I am struggling to understand why Serif seems to just focus on bug-hunting rather than enhancing the designer's experience. Ultimately, it means I use Affinity Designer less and less, which is a shame, because I love it.

to move both handles of a node equally click on one.... then hold left and right mouse buttons down together and drag

[Dazmondo77]

On 11/10/2020 at 1:05 PM, Stephen_H said:

I'd be willing to pay $50 just for an app that will allow me to proof a repro-ready PDF. Just give me the ability to view each colour channel individually to confirm over printing, knockout, spot colours, colour mode. Add listing image resolution, profiles, dimensions, PDF versions etc and I'd trust ALL repro files coming out of Affinities apps. This wouldn't be something all users would need or want, so make it an optional extra.

I suggested a while ago similar to above, but for it to be a 'proof persona' as all the features you detail are pretty essential for worry free supplying to a print service provider. I would also add the ability to print a proof to postscript printers and retain CMYK and Vectors at least to the quality of Adobe Reader

[Bandsaws]

Adding my voice to the folks asking for this feature - it's so table stakes I was stunned to discover it was missing when I started exploring my newly-purchased Affinity Designer install.  I also maintain an Adobe Creative Suite subscription, so I can use Illustrator to do my tracing for now, but the goal of picking up Affinity was to eventually switch away because I like the overall user experience more, so please continue to prioritize this - so far it's the only thing I've discovered is missing to be able to adopt Affinity full time.

[Kokosz]

On 11/5/2020 at 6:21 AM, dreamdancer said:

Thank You! I just bought Image Vectorizer and it works well. I needed to trace a bitmap image for a project and was forced to use AI on my oldest computer. Not fun. I came here to find out if Affinity Designer was going to be able to do that, Image Vectorizer is just what I needed.

Could you write something about this "Image Vectorizer" tool? I was trying find it but without success  is this: http://www.svgvector.com/vectorize-image-mac.html ?

Edited January 24, 2021 by Kokosz

[v_kyr]

27 minutes ago, Kokosz said:

Could you write something about this "Image Vectorizer" tool? I was trying find it but without success ...

"Image Vectorizer" (AFAIK it's only available via the Mac AppStore) is basically just an older Potrace GUI app from the Potrace author, it doesn't perform any color traces and thus only allows to set/assign manually a stroke and fill color to a trace.

The one you referenced instead is SuperVectorizer, which is one of the best tools for MacOS and much better than "ImageVectorizer". To get an idea of what common tracing/vectorizing tools are available see the following informations:

Some forum threads about bitmap tracing/vectorization:

• Image Tracing in Affinity Designer?
• Image Trace to Vector Path
• Converting Pixel drawing to Vector?
• Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER
• Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer
• ... and so on ...

Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs:

• Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac)
• TracedLines (commercial, Mac)
• Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac)
• DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac)
• Inkscape (free, Win + Mac)
• MS Expression Design 4 (win, nowadays free)
• Image Vectorizer (commercial, mac)
• Vector Magic (commercial, win + mac)

Online tracing tools:

• autotracer
• vectorizer
• vectorization
• Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free)
• ...etc...

Online centerline supporting tracing tools:

• Rapid resizer
• fConvert
• Online Vectorizer
• ...etc...

[Ozymandias1972]

12 hours ago, v_kyr said:

"Image Vectorizer" (AFAIK it's only available via the Mac AppStore) is basically just an older Potrace GUI app from the Potrace author, it doesn't perform any color traces and thus only allows to set/assign manually a stroke and fill color to a trace.

The one you referenced instead is SuperVectorizer, which is one of the best tools for MacOS and much better than "ImageVectorizer". To get an idea of what common tracing/vectorizing tools are available see the following informations:

Some forum threads about bitmap tracing/vectorization:

• Image Tracing in Affinity Designer?
• Image Trace to Vector Path
• Converting Pixel drawing to Vector?
• Auto Trace In AFFINITY DESIGNER
• Best Image Vectorizer for Mac with Affinity Designer
• ... and so on ...

Vectorization and autotracing software for Win + Macs:

• Super Vectorizer 2 (commercial, Mac)
• TracedLines (commercial, Mac)
• Intaglio Vectorize (free to use, Mac)
• DragPotrace (Mac) + Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• Potrace (free, Win + Mac)
• AutoTrace (free, Win+Mac)
• Inkscape (free, Win + Mac)
• MS Expression Design 4 (win, nowadays free)
• Image Vectorizer (commercial, mac)
• Vector Magic (commercial, win + mac)

Online tracing tools:

• autotracer
• vectorizer
• vectorization
• Vectorize Raster Images Online (online Photopea, free)
• ...etc...

Online centerline supporting tracing tools:

• Rapid resizer
• fConvert
• Online Vectorizer
• ...etc...

Actually, I found that using Adobe Capture has been the best solution in my workflow using AirDrop which works wonders. I recently updated to Big Sur with a new 2019 iMac I got a year ago using Affinity Designer and it's been very good. Especially given the fact that with AirDrop's ease of use, I used to go with Dropbox as a go around which was a pain in the neck. This was a thread I posted a year ago about this issue: 

I hope this may help although SuperVectorizer looks great as an alternative. 

[Fixx]

Also the new Vectorize! for mac is pretty good, not too many params to adjust though. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vectorize/id1520204499