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Image Trace to Vector Path


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  • Staff

Hi Willy Pimentel,
No, not yet. Currently you have to use third-party apps for that. If you search the forums for tracing and similar terms you will find quite a few suggestions for apps/services you can use. We are considering adding a tracing tool assuming the dev team achieves the output quality they are aiming for but it will take quite some time until we get there.

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One of the best i know is Vector Magic available both as a service and as an independent application, however it's quite expensive. All others you may find vary a little and their quality/results depend a little on the  type of images you are trying to trace - are they black and white drawings, colour images, logos....?

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5 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Or check out Inkscape - it's free!

It requires the Xquartz X11 enviroment which don't find in my apps installed..

I really wished it was part of designer .... That would be a killer for illustrator!! 

 

 
 
Willy Pimentel
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12 minutes ago, Willy Pimentel said:

It requires the Xquartz X11 enviroment which don't find in my apps installed..

I really wished it was part of designer .... That would be a killer for illustrator!! 

 

Just use then instead Potrace together with DragPotrace a GUI for Potrace. The later (DragPotrace) also has an English user face, so don't worry about the Japanese languange on the website, if you download and install the tool it's UI will be English. Under the DragPotrace prefs you have just once to point to the installation folder of Potrace.

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8 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi Willy Pimentel,
No, not yet. Currently you have to use third-party apps for that. If you search the forums for tracing and similar terms you will find quite a few suggestions for apps/services you can use. We are considering adding a tracing tool assuming the dev team achieves the output quality they are aiming for but it will take quite some time until we get there.

This is why I do not work with this program. 

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11 hours ago, Willy Pimentel said:

It requires the Xquartz X11 enviroment which don't find in my apps installed..

I really wished it was part of designer .... That would be a killer for illustrator!! 

 

Inkscape runs on both Mac and Windows. Which one are you running? If you are using Mac, X11 does come with the operating system. Look in your Applications/Utilities folder and you should see Xquarts there at the bottom. It doesn't look pretty but it will do a decent job of making rasters into vectors for you. I like @v_kyr's recommendation though too. 

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  • 2 months later...

AFAIK on Macs it was included since OS X Mountain Lion (10.8, 2012), afterwards X11 isn't longer a direct part of the operating system. Apple instead supports the evolution of XQuartz and refers to this external project (see also on Github). Though there are also some plain Quartz ports of Inkscape for Macs, which then don't need XQuartz at all.

However there are also some other tracing tools (free and commercial) beside Inkscape, which then use OSX Quartz natively. Personally on Macs I sometimes use SV, DragPotrace, but mostly some own programmed (also potrace based, but internal) app ...

btracy_dev.jpg.aebe661003ec4d4a2eb28b421247cea7.jpg

btracy_run.jpg.92af0ac1f7633745e06be9ce1379ec13.jpgbtracy_svg_ad.jpg.d2e200754d2673e831223ea099241c14.jpg

... I mostly use my own tools here since I've build AppKit and iOS versions out of that stuff, so that I can use it on the iPad too for bitmap to vector tracing. I've also gave it recently some batch processing capability (only rudimentory for the OSX version so far), since I needed that for converting several icons and was to lazy to trace single ones step for step.

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  • 2 months later...

Hi guys,

i actually haven't used this feature in Illustrator, but this app works well with Designer iPad ($5 in app purchase). I assume it may be overly simple / consumer for what some are after but hey.

Latest release notes state "Working hard on the new version, coming soon for MacOS, iOS and the new iPadOS!" ... interesting 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imaengine-vector/id599309610#?platform=ipad

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  • 3 months later...
  • Staff

Hi mdjaniszyn,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
There's no eta for this feature. This will only be implemented if the dev team is able to achieve the output quality they are aiming for. There's plenty utilities able to trace images which you can then import to Affinity apps. See my post above for a few of them. If you have purchased the application in the last 14 days you are still able to request a refund if that's what you wish, however there's way more important reasons to choose/use Designer than an automatic tracer. Using a third party utility for now shouldn't make your workflow much more complicated.

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Will any of the software mentioned be able to vectorize down to the pixel level?

I'm attempting to convert a minecraft skin to vector, each individual pixel needs to be vectorized. All the tools I have tried turn the whole thing to smooth lines and all the pixel detail is lost. 

I know this isn't normally what someone would want to do but I need to retain the pixilation of the minecraft skin in vector format. 

The skin file is only 64x64 pixels. Perhaps there's a way to convert the pixels to a larger grid that can be picked up by the vectorization algorithms.

 

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On 1/15/2019 at 3:21 PM, MEB said:

Hi Willy Pimentel,
No, not yet. Currently you have to use third-party apps for that. If you search the forums for tracing and similar terms you will find quite a few suggestions for apps/services you can use. We are considering adding a tracing tool assuming the dev team achieves the output quality they are aiming for but it will take quite some time until we get there.

The one in Serif Drawplus was very good. We are still using that on a daily basis.

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7 hours ago, Scott Prock said:

down to the pixel level

If the app has not the needed functions simply enlarge the file with the correct scaling (integers) and algorithm (without interpolation) before tracing/vectorizing. Or just zoom in an take a screenshot first.

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Not sure I understand completely ... I'm having to take a 64x64px png and stretch it over 6000x8000px. I don't know of any other way to upscale a raster image that small other then converting it to vector. If I could get the raster image to have enough detail at a larger size I think the vector tracing could work, but that's where I'm at a loss as to how.

 

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2 hours ago, Scott Prock said:

Not sure I understand completely ... I'm having to take a 64x64px png and stretch it over 6000x8000px. I don't know of any other way to upscale a raster image that small other then converting it to vector. If I could get the raster image to have enough detail at a larger size I think the vector tracing could work, but that's where I'm at a loss as to how.

 

That sounds more appropriate for some kind of tiling, either by:

  • Using the Fill Tool, with the Type set to bitmap, and the appropriate Extend option; or
  • Creating a raster brush from your image, then using it to paint the larger skin that you need.

-- Walt
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  • Staff

Hi Scott Prock,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Do you want to upscale the 64x64 pixels image to what size in pixels? From your posts it's not clear if you want to fill an area of 6000x8000px with the 64x64px image without changing its size (so repeating it multiples times until the whole area is filled) or simply scale up the 64x64px image to a larger size - in that case to what size in pixels?

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I need to be able to print the minecraft skin (gift my daughter). Therefore the 64px image needs to scale up to the 6000x8000. Obviously there's no way to print something that small onto that size of canvas so I wanted to vectorize the skin so it could be scaled as large as I need it. 

The problem is all the vectorizing software will smooth out the pixels which defeats the look of the blocky nature of the skin. 

I have actually completed the vectorization of the skin manually. The final layer count came out to 1699 but it took me FOREVER as I had to create the pixel grid and re-color every single pixel to match the skin. I have ten kids, and if I have to do this to every single one it will take me until 2025 before I'm finished LOL

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7 hours ago, Scott Prock said:

All the tools I have tried turn the whole thing to smooth lines and all the pixel detail is lost.

The algorithm has to be set correctly before. But again the secure way:

1. Scale it to 6400x6400px with something like ”no interpolation”.

2. Vectorize and stretch it. Now you will get only very tiny antialiasing, if you want.

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