Image Trace - Raster to Vector conversion

[Wizaerd]

1 hour ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

I realize now that I wrote my previous reply in a bad mood, so I apologize for the tone.

Just wanted to mention that if you used Canvas before, you might as well want to download the trial of PhotoLine for comparison. It's similar in intent as Canvas, but more powerful in regards to image editing. And has all the features that you mentioned (well, the latest beta has scripting and a com interface, and is not yet released): including an auto-trace option. Much more affordable too.

Although the result of auto-tracing is much better/cleaner in dedicated tools, of course.

 

Besides autotrace, the two other features I use a lot of, which Designer doesn't have, is converting a path to a selection, or converting a selection to a path.  I know many image editors have really good masking tools, but I find it much easier to draw a path around an object and then convert that path to a selection for creating a mask or a clipping object.  With the selection modifiers (such as expand, grow, feather, etc...) I find it much easier to isolate different parts of an image.  If Designer had these, I wouldn't be here complaining...  

 

I'll take a look at PhotoLine though.  Perhaps that would be a better option for me, because you;re right about Canvas being rather antiquated.

[Medical Officer Bones]

You may like PhotoLine in that case, because it has a very nice "Vector Lasso" tool that automatically switches a selection ("lasso" in PL) to an editable path without the need for conversion. Switching back to any other tool turns it back into a selection.

 

 

[SrPx]

On 11/12/2017 at 10:45 PM, Wizaerd said:

Because it takes time to download a new app, and a learning curve to try and learn that one special function you downloaded it for, and then don't touch it again for several months, so that when you do need to use it again, you're once more having to re-learn it. 

 

I'll probably switch back to ACD Canvas X, which handles most of what illustrator does, as well as most of what photoshop does all in one single application.  Yup, vector and raster capabilities in a single application.

 

 

The only solid reason for me in all that would be one not mentioned (I believe) here, mostly in Windows : Installing constantly apps makes the system unstable and slow, as it is adding registry entries, and due to lazy programming, or Windows failures, leaving back unneeded libraries, and/or conflicts. Still, a system can be partially cleaned (yeah, this would be very far from a casual user or casual hobbyist, but not from an advanced hobbyist. It could be an interesting conversation, as I was that before being a pro (and initially a casual user), the difference among the two is maybe just the extra experience, specially acquired under pressure and constant capability of being sufficiently paid for your work. Other than that, an advanced hobbyist skills are very similar.) This kind of user, me and a bunch of friends of mine (coders and graphic grunts) have usually been able to clean our OS, or just maintain burned to DVDs images of the whole system (now in other supports, I just don't do that anymore) and its apps, including every settings, data, etc. So that a full OS is formatted and back to every app, driver, etc, in less than an hour (provided is the same machine, or another machine with same hardware pieces : IE, used working as tech support in a college center, same image for a bunch of machines). Also, you don't go growing that set of apps. You discover which excel for its use. I discarded quite a number of tracers once I discovered my way with potrace, and later, even with the version embedded in inkscape (but console has certain advantages. With a GUI, that you can preview easierly)

 

The re-learning... ehm, sorry, have to disagree here as well, a little bit. What I have discovered through a lot of.. years, is that re-learning only makes your brain more capable, and makes learning and adapting new stuff each time easier. In the long run, this habit is an absolute winner. Learning Blender with the UI it had back in 2002, that was pretty hard if you ask me, but allowed me to be able to jump to any UI in 3D apps. I was too used to 3DS Max, Truespace, Organica and Lightwave. At some point, one starts noticing a new UI is a matter of an afternoon if the UI is pretty different and unexpected. (still, bad designs do exist, no matter how flexible one is, if a workflow needs 10 interactions when could be done in 2, or small icons, or inconsistencies, etc. But Affinity excels specially in this field. )

 

Reason why this of having several tools is not just super convenient results-wise, and so to get the flexibility not just professional projects needs: Any indy (heck, these are pro projects in my book, should not include here... at least a bunch of them) project, any advanced hobbyist work, specially as funds are not infinite needs a ton of switching. So it benefits the final output, benefits the projects, and also great as a gymnastic exercise for the brain, than in th elong run makes you much much faster in whatever the tool used, even when back to a fully standard, professional software. This is not a theory, is one of my most proven facts in my every day since decades.

 

The OS am using while I'm writing these lines, and which I use for all sort of 2D, 3D and whatever project, is, as seen in the signature, very old and cr4ppy. With TONS of apps and utilities (even stuff like Windirstat to fast check files getting to big, etc). Yeah, is slower than a vanilla windows with this poor machine, and I tell you, it eats HUGE print files with almost two hundreds of layers without any serious issue. I'm not even doing things "right" as in the past (reinstalling by a saved image with all needed essential apps and drives,or better said, just dumping back, unattended while having a coffee, to a clean state in one hour), have not uninstalled in years... runs like a charm. Is also about being able to go cleaning a bit stuff, and do proper uninstalls.

 

 

On 12/12/2017 at 9:26 AM, Medical Officer Bones said:

But the drawing tools, although much better than Canvas X, still can't compete with the likes of Affinity or Krita.

 

I tested several times the app, and I do agree with that.

 

 

On 12/12/2017 at 7:44 PM, Wizaerd said:

 

When I first started dabbling with illustrations and image editing back in 1999-2000, I used Canvas exclusively. 

 

Sorry if I'm very wrong, is just curiosity... I used from time to time old versions in magazines covers ( I was very fan of getting even several brands of magazines, pc related, linux ones, and graphics related, for many years till all begun to be available (free tools and info) on the inet) , of sth called Deneba Canvas. Is it that one, evolved ?

 

On 12/12/2017 at 8:49 PM, Medical Officer Bones said:

Although the result of auto-tracing is much better/cleaner in dedicated tools, of course.

 

Like happens in general with a bunch of specialized tools (I'm thinking of UV mapping in 3D, for example...)

 

On 12/12/2017 at 10:01 PM, Wizaerd said:

Besides autotrace, the two other features I use a lot of, which Designer doesn't have, is converting a path to a selection, or converting a selection to a path.

 

Funny as it might sound, and while Photo I plan it to end up as my main raster graphic editing tool, I'm still using the apps I was using previously, but have purchased Designer, and the thing is I used very, very intensively Photo in the public beta times. I think it has quite some workflows for this : I made tutorials about that for new users to go from its "vector" tools to selections, and viceversa. Not exactly same workflows one has in PS, but quite functional, in my opinion. Indeed, I can't find the threads right now, but I believe my tuts even involved going to mask and "quick mask" (called so in PS) too, back and forth to vector and selections. Similar results, but different steps as I always did in PS. If you are using selections, I guess your output is planned to be raster, anyway....And you can very easily import stuff as raster from Designer, as well...

 

[Wizaerd]

On 12/16/2017 at 10:06 AM, SrPx said:

Sorry if I'm very wrong, is just curiosity... I used from time to time old versions in magazines covers ( I was very fan of getting even several brands of magazines, pc related, linux ones, and graphics related, for many years till all begun to be available (free tools and info) on the inet) , of sth called Deneba Canvas. Is it that one, evolved ?

 

 

Yes, it used to be made by Deneba but ACD Systems bought it from Deneba and makes it now.

 

I still struggle with Designer because it just doesn't have the same features as Canvas, or if those features are there, they're hidden quite well.  Last night I was trying to change the linear start & ending point for a gradient applied to a stroke.  Never could figure out how to change the direction of that gradient.  Or a gradient applied as a fill on some text.  Found the Gradient Fill tool, but what's the point of being able to apply a gradient as a fill if you can't change it's direction, etc?  The gradient fill tool isn;t really what I wanted, but it's the only thing I found that would allow for interactively dragging my gradient as I wanted it...

[MEB]

Hi Wizaerd,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Select the stroke/path object which have the stroke gradient applied, change to the Fill Tool, set the Context dropdown in the context toolbar to Stroke, then drag the end point handles on canvas to set the angle you want.

[griestopf]

I found this thread because I am looking for an automated pixel to vector conversion function (Vectorizer) in Affinity Designer. An early official post in this thread dating back to 2014 announced some funcionality to come up soon to be "not just the obvious... ". Now its four years later and there still seems to be NO VECTORIZING at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'd be extremely glad to at least have something obvious. Anything would be better than nothing here.

[MEB]

Hi griestopf,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

There's plans to add auto-trace functionality to the program (assuming the dev teams are able to achieve the output quality they are aiming for) however this is not expected for the 1.x cycle of the app. Check Affinity Designer's roadmap to see what's coming/planned for the 1.x cycle.

Meanwhile  you may want to consider a third party app like Super Vectorizer, Image Vectorizer, Vector Magic etc or web service (like https://vectormagic.com) to convert the image into vectors then import them to Designer.

 

 

[M-rivers]

On 5/7/2018 at 3:59 AM, MEB said:

Check Affinity Designer's roadmap to see what's coming/planned for the 1.x cycle.

Is this feature request still on the road map? This thread is almost 3yrs old, and the link isn't available anymore. I've been patiently waiting to hear more about this but haven't heard anything, hope it's still on the roadmap.

[VirginiaL]

Hi you all. I was searching for a tutorial for this tool. Any news?

[Alfred]

35 minutes ago, VirginiaL said:

Hi you all. I was searching for a tutorial for this tool. Any news?

There’s still no auto-trace functionality in Affinity Designer, if that’s what you’re asking about.

[VirginiaL]

yes, it was my question. Thank you

[Guest]

Just thought I'd leave this little teaser from Adobe and the new Vectorize feature coming to Illustrator on the iPad next week. It's probably also worth mentioning the the first post in this thread is from August 2014?! 7+ years?! FWIW Illustrator for iPad turns 1 tomorrow (October 20th).