AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)

[Barnabas Thomas]

+1. I'm coming from Figma, and I guess I've been totally spoiled by how good its Image Tracer plugin is - it's saved me literally hours of work. Serif, I'd love to see this!

[Ray C]

This was a feature in the previous Serif product. I too could use this.

[CodeExplode]

Image tracer in Illustrator is a major part of my workflow, though the main reason I use it is to actually smooth raster lines and give the impression of line weight to them due to how Illustrator tapers the traced lines. Even if it's not an artistically chosen line weight like an artist would do with pen pressure, it's still a nice effect rather than lines of all the same width with no tapering, and the actual vector output doesn't matter so much to me.

While the usual tracing features (which also exist elsewhere) aren't so useful to me, I'd love to see a smooth & tapering effects pass which Illustrator's tracing somehow manages, which no other tracing implementation does as far as I know. I don't have many good ideas for how it would be implemented though, perhaps first removing speckles of certain sizes, breaking all continuous blobs of colour into vector objects, and then doing a tapering effect on any end segments which follow a long stretch of roughly equal width shape outlines running in near-parallel.

[spidermurph]

Have you all seen the new Inkscape 1.2

It has vector trace and a heap of other features you have been asking for and, it's free.

They have made a lot of improvements to the app and it feels very pro now.

[AffinityAppMan]

4 hours ago, spidermurph said:

Have you all seen the new Inkscape 1.2

It has vector trace and a heap of other features you have been asking for and, it's free.

They have made a lot of improvements to the app and it feels very pro now.

I need to check this out. Maybe moving to this free app instead of using Affinity Designer can solve a lot of issues.  I haven’t seen many improvements on Affinity Designer in a while. 

[Pixx]

For a program such as Affinity Designer not to have Live Trace is disappointing to learn. I am not sure if Affinity is a remake of DrawPlus back in the days, in which tracing was part up until v. X8. But the AutoTrace function has not made it into Affinity Designer. This forum is pondering on the subject with their first post since 2014. Sigh.

[Ozymandias1972]

On 5/22/2022 at 8:49 AM, AffinityAppMan said:

I need to check this out. Maybe moving to this free app instead of using Affinity Designer can solve a lot of issues.  I haven’t seen many improvements on Affinity Designer in a while. 

I think they will update Designer in the future as it already had a patch along with other apps. As for vector trace, I've never had a problem using Adobe Capture as a go-around to export an SVG to Designer on the Mac. The rest of Designer is fine but for vector trace, if I have to, is done on Adobe Capture which is a free app for iOS ( iPhone and iPad ). It works for me every time. Unless you're on Windows, then use Inkscape or other vector apps as a go around. 

[PaulEC]

People keep mentioning that DrawPlus had an autotrace feature. Apart from the fact that what was in an old "legacy" product is irrelevant to the Affinity apps, (as they use completely different code,) it was (IMHO) pretty rubbish! Basically you either got detail less blobs or a huge file with hundreds of nodes. Inkscape is much better and, hopefully, AD will have an equally (or better) autotrace feature soon.

[Catshill]

14 hours ago, PaulEC said:

People keep mentioning that DrawPlus had an autotrace feature. Apart from the fact that what was in an old "legacy" product is irrelevant to the Affinity apps, (as they use completely different code,) it was (IMHO) pretty rubbish! Basically you either got detail less blobs or a huge file with hundreds of nodes. Inkscape is much better and, hopefully, AD will have an equally (or better) autotrace feature soon.

I don’t find Autotrace rubbish as long as you spend time adjusting the parameters beforehand.

[PaulEC]

4 hours ago, Catshill said:

I don’t find Autotrace rubbish as long as you spend time adjusting the parameters beforehand.

Your experience of Autotrace in DrawPlus is obviously different to mine! I always seemed to spend forever messing with it, just to get a mediocre result. In Inkscape it just works (most of the time). I really hope that when we finally get Autotrace in AD it is much better than it was in DrawPlus.

[RalphLG]

On 5/24/2022 at 6:13 AM, Catshill said:

I don’t find Autotrace rubbish as long as you spend time adjusting the parameters beforehand.

I agree. It all depends on the source file and the settings. The results may even be better than expected, with a variable line thickness effect ( DrawPlusX5 ).

[NonoGG]

+1

Have been looking for an alternative for Inkscape. The UI of Affinity Designer appealed to me immediately. However, in my opinion, a few important features are still missing, such as the Auto Trace mentioned here.

[ashf]

This is a useful Potrace GUI web app since there isn't decent Potorace GUI app for Windows.
Potrace is for black/white only but well works for logos/text.
https://svgco.de/

[Distanzia]

I just got AD 2, still don't see this feature... or am I blind?

[DesignByAdrian]

10 hours ago, Distanzia said:

I just got AD 2, still don't see this feature... or am I blind?

They haven't promised it for version 2.0 and it's not listed under new features.

[Jochen Damm]

9 hours ago, Distanzia said:

I just got AD 2, still don't see this feature... or am I blind?

No, it is not there yet. There are rumors that it might be in a version between 2.1 and 2.4 but I have no idea how accurate this statement might be. But you don't have to pay more for this feature if it will be released under 2.x branch. Even if it take some years. I miss that feature as well but even without it the software in general is great.

I already purchased the whole suite even if I have to save money urgently. In my case photography and graphic/communication design are a pricey hobby. My only income is invalidity pension and upped to a guaranteed minimum pension. This barely covers living expenses. I am not an Affinity fanboy but I added this statement to show how much I belive in Serif and my desire to support them. Sure, I wanted to use the discount (initial price). Without that discount I would had waited a few months and bought the suite piece by piece while still using version 1. My priority is Publisher, followed by Designer and Photo at last. I don't have much experience in photo editing and barely do more than basic corrections. And for working with vector graphics is Inkscape still tool of choice for many tasks. I work with Inkscape for about 20 years - a period you can't forget easily. In Inkscape I vectorized several graphics and logos. Among them in version 0.48 (with Potrace 1.6) several scanned logos for re-creation. It took some time but the outcome was better than the result from Adobe Illustrator (CS2). After all these years I am still impressed because Inkscape was full of bugs at that time and slow. Not useful for any designer outside of the Linux bubble.

[katho3d]

I just purchased the whole suite too. Designer v2 is great, Thank you, but I would still love to see an autotrace feature in one of the upcoming 2.x versions 😁

[GeGr]

The autotrace feature in Designer V2 would really be great !!!

[Barnabas Thomas]

+1, hoping to see Image Trace in a 2.x release.

[A4DP]

I also think image tracing is a much awaited feature to most designers.

[Jany]

As you can see, V2 is out for some time now, yet still no auto trace. I requested refund for v2, not paying/updating till this function will be added. Have to use inkscape to do what PAID software should do years ago. SHAME.

[Pixx]

Hi Jany,

I can see your point and where you come from. You can only work with what you have, that might not always be what you want. As it was stated before, Serif will wake up to it, it won't be news to them.

Kind regards

[eobet]

I had to use my work laptop with Adobe Illustrator on it just now to trace something.

Really wish Affinity could get a solution here...

[SkaO]

2024 no trace tool any near. Even Inkscape an open softwear have that function. Sometimes I´m really bavveled that some basic features doesn't exist in this programm. I just thought, let me trace it real qick, I have this programm. But no why bother? Use the pen tool and trace it by yourself. How confenient.
We have chat-GBT and DallE how could trace or erase the background better than anything what serif could offer. 

[VAK]

Ayo … any updates on this. Just started using AD bc unnamed competitor software was bloating my PC.

Image trace is a big deal for me though, and I'd love to know how I can do that here, or when we can expect something.
For now I'mma have to use some online AI tool I guess, or Inkscape (which does img trace pretty well imo).

Thanks for any leads or suggestions.
GG