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Image Trace - Raster to Vector conversion


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The ability to bring in a raster image and trace into vector would be a good feature. This is something I often use in Illustrator and would love to see in Affinity, ideally with more control. 

 

While switching tools between personas is great, only being able to rasterize a vector and not the reverse is troublesome. 

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Can you post some examples of images you would like to trace and some results of what you would like to achieve. My pet hate is people auto-tracing photos, I just can't understand why you would want to do it. I get the back and white logo that you need the outline from but this could be achieved in a more reliable way if the process could be directed by the user.

 

Many thanks,

TonyB.

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My pet hate is people auto-tracing photos, I just can't understand why you would want to do it.

 

Hey Tony,

I actually do sometimes use auto-tracing of photos as it can achieve an unique look. Think of Lyonel Feininger and cubism, sort of. I don’t have the time to check my old stuff right now but I quickly found at least one example where I had auto-traced a figure in FreeHand, something like 15 years ago. I see quite some situations where algorithmic aesthetics might have its place.

Autotracing.pdf

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  • 2 weeks later...

I too am a fan of live tracing and I use it for vectorising my hand lettering as well as my watercolours and textures that I create. All quite different types of tracing. 

 

For hand lettering I usually like the slight irregularity and texture that comes out nicely in print, so I often set the path fitting to 0.8. I also only add a hint of blur, about 0.7. For this reason I've held on to an old version of Illustrator (CS 5) which allowed for values under 1. In newer versions you can't get this beautiful reproduction. 

 

Watercolours are a different cup of tea though. For me it's important with the colour, but I can welcome some happy accidents when I trace that kind of work. 

 

The next area is textures where I like to either scan ink, crumpled paper or grain, or create the texture digitally and then vectorise it and use it as a pattern fill or as a texture in parts of my work. The advantage of being able to scale vector work pairs well with using scalable textures, especially for print. 

 

If Affinity had the ability for precise control that has been lost in Illustrator, I think it could be a feature that would win over a lot of people who do hand lettering and other art forms that requires this feature. :) 

 

I would be wonderful to be able to trace your artwork with Affinity. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey, do you remember Adobe Streamline?

Illustrator had eaten it.

 

Tracing is a very good feature when you need an unique “aspect” of roughness. I used to work with scanned images or printed logos, for example, and get the material in a hurry when you do not need a lot of precision on the fidelity compared with the original.

 

And is a very good option to raster a photograph or image and reduce the colors to any desired number. All converted to vectors and with the number of color or tones that you desire.

post-186-0-18311800-1410133123_thumb.jpg

Graphic designer from Bilbao (Spain) FreeHand forever. Affinity Designer rocks! - Diseñador gráfico de Bilbao (España). FreeHand forever. Affinity Designer ¡mola!

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  • 10 months later...

I use illustrators Live trace to create abstract images from multiple auto traces of the same image with variation changes to the settings - the final result is interesting, experimental and never looks like an auto traced image.

 

If I do a sketch and auto trace it I use the line envelope and width tools with maybe the roughen filter set set below .9 to add digital noise to the stoke - auto trace is just a starting point.

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I think many of the posts here miss the way live trace is used mostly today - what's needed is a replacement for Illustrator's Live Trace tool. You'd never want to use this for photos as firstly illustrator isn't for this, and secondly if you want that effect you'd be better off using photoshop (posterise tool etc). The Live Trace tool is either likely to be used for tracing previous artwork when neither the vector file nor a lot of time is available. Secondly, and probably the biggest reason why Affinity NEEDS to include this tool, is for illustrators and designers scanning in their artwork. This includes people like my wife who illustrates childrens books, and all the designers out there doing hand drawn lettering, elements etc. We know that is almost everyone at the moment, and I'm really shocked this isn't seen as a bigger need. Until Affinity has a live trace feature I will still need Illustrator and I don't want to be using two programs. I'd rather jump ship when it can be a replacement, and that certainly isn't yet. 

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Well said Newbie, I currently still use Freehand for most things & I also use Illustrator cc which I hate with a passion except the Live trace. Freehand's trace was never any good. Affinity looks good to me so far but untill they put in Pantone colors it's useless to me. The demo is also now useless as it's expired & if I download another one it's also immediately expired.

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Affinity looks good to me so far but untill they put in Pantone colors it's useless to me.

 

If you are impatient you can buy Affinity Designer, so you also get to run the newest development beta where Pantone colors are already supported. But if you are patient you can also wait until the next major official release which will include this functionality.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Posted 09 October 2015 - 10:56 PM

I think many of the posts here miss the way live trace is used mostly today - what's needed is a replacement for Illustrator's Live Trace tool. You'd never want to use this for photos as firstly illustrator isn't for this, and secondly if you want that effect you'd be better off using photoshop (posterise tool etc). The Live Trace tool is either likely to be used for tracing previous artwork when neither the vector file nor a lot of time is available. Secondly, and probably the biggest reason why Affinity NEEDS to include this tool, is for illustrators and designers scanning in their artwork. This includes people like my wife who illustrates childrens books, and all the designers out there doing hand drawn lettering, elements etc. We know that is almost everyone at the moment, and I'm really shocked this isn't seen as a bigger need. Until Affinity has a live trace feature I will still need Illustrator and I don't want to be using two programs. I'd rather jump ship when it can be a replacement, and that certainly isn't yet. 

 
 
Me too here! When Affinity can trace I will buy, until then Ill keep using Illustrator and hold off on my el capitan upgrade…..Affinity we are waiting, Thanks for your work, J
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Live tracing is really neccessary if you want to maintain the look of analog hand lettering and logos. Here you can see how it's used and the workflow from paper to digital: 

 

youtube.com/watch?v=vlsaI3f0JYc

 

Like you can see in the vid, having advanced settings to adjust the tracing threshold is key for good results.

 

Hand lettering is going strong on sites like Instagram, having this feature would make Affinity attractive to a big chunk of people.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Live trace is the one thing that is keeping me in Illustrator. That and the line width tool, though live trace is more important. I illustrate educational materials for children, and live trace enables me to convert a small-ish simple line illustration into something that can be used on a poster, in seconds. No trace, no deal! I am very much looking forward to being able to jump ship over to Affinity.

MacBook Pro 15" 32GB RAM, iPad Pro 12.9" + Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil.  Software tools of my trade: Affinity Designer | Affinity Publisher | PDF Expert | Drafts | The Archive | Plutio  

https://eandrpublications.com.au

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Some lean apps for live tracing exist, from the same dev who created the code Inkscape uses (Potrace): http://image-vectorizer.com

 

The software is usually GPL licensed, but the dev offers licensing for commercial software too. The Affinity team could contact him if they don't want to develop the code themselves. http://www.icosasoft.ca

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The Live Trace 'look' seems to have become an actual style in surface design and illustration circles. I started out spending ages trying to smooth my traced and scanned designs but now see lots of stuff that has lots of raggedy edges on it so it seems that buyers are ok with it and it's really just us geeks that want perfect curves! A lot of buyers for fabric designs will not go near anything that isn't vector based so the ability to do more than just smooth lines.

 

 

i need to remain versatile style wise and so for now I will have to keep my old version of illustrator running alongside designer until such time i can create scatter brushes, vector based textures and pattern swatches in designer.  I really hope you consider adding these features in the future as I am enjoying working in Designer WAY more than Illustrator.

 

Thanks

Frankie

https://www.instagram.com/frankie_van_mourik/

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Some lean apps for live tracing exist, from the same dev who created the code Inkscape uses (Potrace): http://image-vectorizer.com

 

The software is usually GPL licensed, but the dev offers licensing for commercial software too. The Affinity team could contact him if they don't want to develop the code themselves. http://www.icosasoft.ca

 

Thanks Str2 for the pointer re: image vectoriser. £3.99 and it's a brilliant piece of kit - you get so much control over the tracing process. Highly recommend this for anyone looking for a way of tracing without involving illustrator.

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  • 2 months later...

For TonyB, examples (see attached below) of what I like to Live Trace that I would love to be able to do in Affinity Designer...

 

Sometimes it's nice to create vector art (because it's scaleable) with a handmade look, rather than clean and computer-generated look.

 

Erica

post-27903-0-37495600-1456636683_thumb.jpg

post-27903-0-13557300-1456636699_thumb.jpg

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Will you guys post updates to the roadmap when you have passed, umm, some of the road signs you posted?   ;)

Regards, Binc

 

Warning: dark, twisted sense of humour.  Do not feed after midnight.

Wheat and BS intolerant.  Only use genuine Guinness to lubricate.

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  • 4 weeks later...

clione - that app you linked to looks great - I will definitely download and try that :)

 

Thank you.

High-End Photographic Prints

 

 

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Back in the days, I used Vector Magic, an online service, with some great results:

http://vectormagic.com/

 

edit: Of course time passed by, so now we also have:

https://www.vectorizer.io/

http://www.autotracer.org/

http://online.rapidresizer.com/tracer.php

http://www.vectorization.org/

 

And so on. I didn't try the new services yet.

Andrew
-
Win10 x64 AMD Threadripper 1950x, 64GB, 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD + 2TB, dual GTX 1080ti
Dual Monitor Dell Ultra HD 4k P2715Q 27-Inch

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