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AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)


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I can confirm that the results from Super Vectorizer are in my opinion terrible. If that's the results users actually expect from an auto-trace then perhaps I'm aiming too high.

 

I was expecting a lot more out of that app.

 

I'd love it if there was a dedicated app that had the capabilities of the tracing features in Illustrator - I'm not sure why someone hasn't made that yet, seems like it'd be a lucrative opportunity.

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I was expecting a lot more out of that app.

 

I'd love it if there was a dedicated app that had the capabilities of the tracing features in Illustrator - I'm not sure why someone hasn't made that yet, seems like it'd be a lucrative opportunity.

 

 

Vector Magic has and it's amazing. I also don't rate the tracing feature in Illustrator.

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TonyB,

 

Vector Magic is $295 for the desktop version! That is expensive! Is it better than the old Streamline application or other similar apps?

 

 

It's the only auto-trace application I would recommend. Everything else is just poor in comparison.

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  • 1 month later...

Can’t help but to add my two cents on the subject.


 


I do not know an Art Director or a Visual Designer in the world that wouldn't use live trace in Adobe Illustrator daily. I used it all the time before we decided in the company to try to use other tools instead of Adobe. It helps with numbers of things when doing late night pitches or when you're looking for a certain company logo and there's only a low res pic out there. Especially when you have to be fast. Or when doing handwritten lettering and need it to be scalable and transformable quickly. I also do not know an illustrator who would use live trace option to get their black/white illustrations to vectors quickly and be able to.


 


There's a lot of tools out there lately. Sketch from Bohemian Coding is my first choice for interface design and vector design for the screen, but for drawing icons and precise vectors it’s not intuitive and keeps acting strange. I think that vector manipulation, especially live trace option would shoot you way ahead of the competition. I bought Affinity, but I am not using it as much as I would if it actually had this feature. For the pixel stuff I just use Sketch, Pixelmator or Mischief.


 


Some tools that have the Live trace feature including iVinci, Manga Studio or Vector Magic usually don’t have the option to effectively edit or manipulate the traced image/illustration, or they simply can’t handle the size of the file if the detail level is high. Illustrator’s live trace is sadly still the best option here - you can choose to keep black and white shapes, and then edit them quickly with the Direct Selection Tool (A), or do it on a higher level with Select > Same > Fill (or Fill+Stroke) which makes the process incredibly simple and fast.


 


So yes, a definite +1 from me as well. And I’m really excited about the persona promise.


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I can understand people's request for an auto-tracing feature, it seems to good to be true. Vectors made without having to actually draw anything. Auto-Tracing like Illustrator's live trace are handy if (and it is a really big if) quality isn't an issue. Sure it is a time saver if quality doesn't matter. The truth is there simply is no substitute for someone taking the time to create an image, logo, ect properly. If you have a high res image to use, then sometimes (depending on the image) live trace will do a decent job but not a great job. You just can't auto-trace something and expect it to be as good as one done by a skilled artist. That isn't to say that it isn't useful, sure there are times when it is useful but I think I would rather have the Affinity team working on adding other innovative features than an auto-trace function. Simple logos are easy to trace and they don't take so much time anyways. Complex images take a long time to trace but if they do, then the auto-trace wouldn't work well on those images anyways. I've never tried VectorMagic though maybe it's quality is close to that of a skilled artist but for $300, I doubt that I will ever know! I could buy a lot of sushi for $300! 

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  • 1 month later...

Wow, I am surprised—really surprised that Affinity Designer does not have trace functionality to convert a jpeg or bmp image to a vector-based image. I really got caught up in the hype of AD and enthusiastically made my purchase, but I guess I did not do my homework that well. When I read how AD was a great alternative to Adobe Illustrator, I guess I just assumed that AD had trace capabilities. I hope the engineers at Serif do not put this feature on the back burner. (This is important!) I hope it is being worked on at this moment. Shoot, I may have to use Illustrator as my primary tool and AD as my backup until things change.

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Wow, I am surprised—really surprised that Affinity Designer does not have trace functionality to convert a jpeg or bmp image to a vector-based image. I really got caught up in the hype of AD and enthusiastically made my purchase, but I guess I did not do my homework that well. When I read how AD was a great alternative to Adobe Illustrator, I guess I just assumed that AD had trace capabilities. I hope the engineers at Serif do not put this feature on the back burner. (This is important!) I hope it is being worked on at this moment. Shoot, I may have to use Illustrator as my primary tool and AD as my backup until things change.

 

What would be helpful is if people post images of what they would like to trace and a result of what the currently expect the output to look like.

 

Then, when we come around to writing a trace feature we will know the users expectations.

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  • 3 weeks later...

What would be helpful is if people post images of what they would like to trace and a result of what the currently expect the output to look like.

 

Then, when we come around to writing a trace feature we will know the users expectations.

 

Thanks for your reply, Tony!

 

I'm not able to post image samples at this time, but as I described above (and futen confirmed by noting scalable handwriting and black/white illustrations), I would need the feature to follow tightly to simple black and white illustration. In Illustrator, this means a high threshold and 1.5-2 px Path Fitting so that scanned art that's been traced looks rough like the original ink line, not totally smooth w/ the smaller details missing.

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Keep in mind that Illustrator didn't have LiveTrace until CS 2 (which would be Illustrator version 12). Affinity Designer is still a very young application and it is still growing and maturing and it will no doubt take time to add this (if they do decide to add it). In the mean time there are many standalone applications that can do this for you. Of course none of them do nearly as good of a job as you can do by simply tracing it yourself.  

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+1 on this.

 

Now that web developers can use SVG for images,  site-wide, - this is a necessity. I had planned on switching to Affinity from Adobe, but I seem to need this capability on every project so, i have to stay with Illustrator for most things. Hand lettering, drawing conversion to lines etc.  --- 'simplify' is also super important - and in the same boat.

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