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AutoTrace (convert raster image to vector)


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What?! STILL no auto-trace in the latest version1.5?! Dang it. I bought this over a year ago and thought it'd be developed by now. Guess I'll have to keep trudging away in Illustrator. :(

 

Autotrace will probably be a 2.x feature rather than a 1.x one. That's why we haven't put it in our roadmap. In other words, it's still years away.

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Definitely could use this feature. Clients with low-res logos are one of the biggest reasons this feature makes Illustrator so useful. 

 

It'd be one more nail in the coffin for Illustrator if Affinity picks it up  ;)

 

It would be great to see some examples of low-res logos you successfully trace in Illustrator so we can benchmark any in-house developments.

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+1

Up to now, my opinion is that CorelDRAW  has the most precize tracing engine. But, unfortunatelly, as you now, this is a Win app.

 

Curious... To me is seems very sluggish and not precise at all...

Illustrator's one (inherited from the "vetust" Streamline maybe) is minimal, but better than Corel.

Anyway tracing engines included in applications are barely better than utilities.

 

Nothing beats Vector Magic today.

Image Vectorizer is a quick and cheap option, better than nothing.

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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Tony, if you are going to benchmark, I'd look at vector magic rather than illustrator. In most cases it still produces better results IMO. Also, for the record I don't really think that vector tracing is particularly important in the grand scheme of things.

 

You might well be right, Illustrator's attempt at tracing a logo today was very mixed and none of the presets matched the real thing without heavy modification. 

 

And Vector Tracing in general is a very situational tool. I find myself using it extremely infrequently, but it's useful to have. Considering that AD is poised to knock Illustrator out of the top spot as a professional designer's weapon of choice, it's one of those features that could do with being implemented.

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Tony, if you are going to benchmark, I'd look at vector magic rather than illustrator. In most cases it still produces better results IMO. Also, for the record I don't really think that vector tracing is particularly important in the grand scheme of things.

 

Yep, I do agree...

Sometimes it could be useful for example to vectorise acquired media (such as strokes or textures).

Logo redesign via vectorisation is something that should be prohibited by international laws  :lol:

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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Yep, I do agree...

Sometimes it could be useful for example to vectorise acquired media (such as strokes or textures).

Logo redesign via vectorisation is something that should be prohibited by international laws  :lol:

 

While I generally agree, I've noticed clients will sometimes make it unavoidable at a conceptual stage. Trying to create a website concept for a smaller client with no official resources happens more often I'd like, and ripping images from a client's current site site can oftentimes be worse for the end result (low-res, high compression etc.).

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While I generally agree, I've noticed clients will sometimes make it unavoidable at a conceptual stage. Trying to create a website concept for a smaller client with no official resources happens more often I'd like, and ripping images from a client's current site site can oftentimes be worse for the end result (low-res, high compression etc.).

 

 

I know what you mean, it happens frequently to me too.

In the past I used to do what you say, today I tend to ask firmly for new assets or specific re-design tasks for a simple reason: "the best logo vectorisation" needs the same amount of refinement work that "from scratch re-design" would require.

Also, it is useless to ask a quality job if the quality is not distributed equally.

 

I think that a Tracing Persona, or something like a Tracing Tool will be very welcome be in AD 2.x.

Great to trace inked pictures, to vectorise resources... Lots of creative way to apply it.

 

But if you try to vectorise a jagged Jpeg oldie 221px wide should prompt a message like:

 

"Hey man, do you like puddings?" 

 

:D

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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I know what you mean, it happens frequently to me too.

In the past I used to do what you say, today I tend to ask firmly for new assets or specific re-design tasks.

It is useless to ask a quality job if the quality is not distributed equally.

 

I think that a Tracing Persona, or something like a Tracing Tool will be very welcome be in AD 2.x.

Great to trace inked pictures, to vectorise resources... Lots of creative way to apply it.

 

But if you try to vectorise a jagged Jpeg oldie 221px wide should prompt a message like:

 

"Hey man, do you like puddings?" 

 

:D

 

It's got my vote, that'd be a great way to solve the problem. Being able to generally trace an image and then fine-tune it manually in a separate workspace would be perfect.

 

You're right about the quality of the job as well.. Wish clients would see it that way from the outset.

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None of the tracing options are magic, but sometimes I get amazing results from Illustrator. What I've found though with a lot of testing is that each app is better at some aspect of the art than another. Illustrator is best overall, but has a problem with long narrow spikes, like the rays of a sun. It shortens them. CorelDraw does a better job with these spikes, and also manages to do cornering better, but often produces results that are just crap. Every now and then, Serif DrawPlus manages to give me a better result than both. The problem with DrawPlus is that the adjustents seem to be nearly meaningless. No rhyme and no reason. Tweak enough and maybe you get a useable result but there's no telling. Vector Magic produced results no better than Illustrator for me. Vector tracing though is an invaluable tool for me. Vector files can be edited in ways that are different than raster images. Vectorizing a file also gives it a vector "look" which sometimes is what we're looking for. So it can be used as a creative tool.

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It would be great to see some examples of low-res logos you successfully trace in Illustrator so we can benchmark any in-house developments.

 

I am one of those people who could care less if tracing ever was put into AD. But I just read through the thread, so what the heck.

 

I did a screen capture of the Affinity logo at the top of the page. CD was useless. The screen shot is what CS6 AI did, though.

 

post-255-0-07321600-1477527283_thumb.png

 

Certainly serviceable and one could then adjust it to suit. The one below is MEB's avatar screen captured from a reply.

 

post-255-0-19935200-1477527455_thumb.png

 

I don't know if I have ever had to use something as small and of screen resolution before when recreating a logo or whatnot.

 

I have used Portrace (which InkScape uses) before and had as good of results if one sets the right parameters. It's OpenSource. What would be needed is a good interface for it so setting those parameters is easy and make sense. But as for a library, it would make a good start.

 

Mike

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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.

I would love to see an auto trace function like Vector Magic in Affinity Designer. It would be a killer selling point if you get the tracing engine up to that level. I would be happy to pay for it in a version 2.0 of Affinity Designer.

 

The tracing abilities in Illustrator aren't up to notch as well.

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No biggie. I can do my vector traces in Photoline, Inkscape, and (the newly open sourced) OpenToonz. OpenToonz actually does a very good job: although it might seem a bit overkill to use Studio Ghibli's animation production tool to trace artwork :-P

 

What is quite unique about OpenToonz is that it can output the single paths as well as the full outlined trace. This allows me to change the drawing intent of the paths easily in illustration software, which is pretty neat.

Do you use Opentoonz for this or GTS?

It seems it's a seperate scan/trace program.

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i've used for serious projects the Potrace included functionality in Inkscape. Is like one menu thing more, you only need to experiment a lot with the right settings for your project. No tracing is going to be good as is, you need to later on clean/average/optimize the stuff a huge lot, no matter what vectorizer you use.  I hate auto tracers with a passion. Even while I tend to use them at the maximum they can provide. Nothing beats manual tracing, and that in the very super rare case I need to trace. Like tracing some silhouettes that need to be very accurate to a mid res bitmap provided by a client to be exported as SVG, imported in Blender 3D, and used as an engraving/bolean carve for example for a very special custom game dice carved designs, or the like (actual projects I made with it, indeed) It worked well. But like always with tracing, with sweat and tears. 

 

I'd recommend not to focus so much in tracing. Not a very professional way of doing vector work, anyway.  Handy, yep, but for certain functional stuff usually not heading to be a really high quality result, or for 3D uses like the one I explained above, which could be as well hand traced, manually with nodes, practically in the time you need to try so many settings to get a nice result.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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+1 to the feature request

 

For my simple need, my current workaround is the free Adobe Capture CC on my iPad

 

It's a bit convoluted to get the vector files over to my PC, but possible.   (Includes full backup of the iPad via iTunes and then a program that can read the backup and copy out the .svg files)

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