Vector Image Tracing with Affinity Designer | 3 Solutions

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Like Loading Now comes the fun part…. Available for Windows, Mac and iPad, Affinity Designer is an award-winning vector graphics software setting the new industry standard in the world of design.
 
 

How To Vectorize a Watercolor Image using Affinity Designer (Mac) – OklaRoots

 

Select OK. Open Affinity Designer, create a new document, and drag your InkScape file on to the design board. Once your image is on your board, select Edit Document.

To remove the background of the image, I found it easiest to use the Layers window. I just unselect all items with the background color. Now you can really play around with your image. You can adjust the size, change the colors of each layer, remove layers, etc.

You can see that, using this technique, you can create simple paintings by hand, and then manipulate them as vectors to create more complicated images. Thank you so much for this! I literally spend a week trying to figure this out. And initially i only found Adobe Illustrator tutorials.

This is really helpful. There are some great ::free:: tools out there, but can definitely be difficult to navigate! Thank you very much, Jess. I thought of buying a third-party software like VectorMagic and at last I found your blog. Very helpful! I have read the tutorial. I use ipad for vectorising calligraphy on affinity designer. Can I use inscape on my ipad? If yes, can you share the link? If no, is there any alternative. Thank you. This is awesome! Watercolor colors are so complicated in their values and hues.

I hope you have other Affinity Designer tutorials in the future. I mostly do stuff for web design, which often includes logo work and modding and touching up various images. I have a XP-Pen Artist Works for me. After Adobe moved to a subscription model, I looked around and tried a few different apps trying to find a replacement for Illustrator. For whatever reason, there is no image trace in Affinity Designer. Will vector image tracing be possible in the future? Who knows. That said, we still have a problem to solve.

The only real way to go about vector image tracing with Affinity Designer is to do so manually using the Pen Tool.

This can be done by simply drawing individual elements right on top of your image, and then coloring them in using the Color Picker tool. In fact, I created a video tutorial demonstrating how to do so:. This method may be right for you if your image is simple enough to trace manually, or if you have something that needs to be traced with precision. The downside of using an automated tracing feature is that it very rarely traces over your image with absolute precision.

Inkscape is a free and open source vector graphics editor that is similar to both Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer. Any regular visitor to this website is surely no stranger to Inkscape. I promise you though, Inkscape is worth a try.

From there the UI is pretty self-explanatory, but feel free to check out this tutorial I made in case you need help:. Not only that, but Inkscape is the only vector graphics editor available on all three operating systems — Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The downside of using this solution is that you have to download yet another application, and then launch that application just to use it for a single task. A common name that kept coming up in my research though Vector Magic :. The benefit of using a web-based solution like Vector Magic is that you can easily create vector tracings of your images, without having to download any other applications or use any third-party plugins.

Another downside to this approach is that when I used it, it was really slow. It took a couple of minutes just for it to trace my example image, whereas Inkscape and Illustrator are nearly instantaneous. Between those three options you should be able to meet all of your vector tracing needs, as cumbersome as it may be.

What are your thoughts? Have you tried any other solution that you found helpful? Feel free to post any questions you may have as well if any part of this lesson was unclear. Want to learn more about how Affinity Designer works?

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read affiliate disclosure here. There is a bit of hostility in their forums from those that police it, directed at those who dear to request new features. EPS, so that is what I used. Luckily, Inkscape makes that possible as well. Copy and Paste any vectors you want to save into a single document to keep your files neat and tidy.

When you save your work, save the master document containing whatever images you like instead of saving them individually. I hope you found this Image Trace workaround helpful!

Let me know what you think about this method, and whether you believe it can be further improved upon! Last updated August with new techniques I found while using this method. Unnecessary steps have been removed from the guide. Cart 0. This also eliminates the need to save each element to its own file. The vectorizing process works the same, regardless. Now comes the fun part…. View fullsize.

Open a new document in Inkscape. Select your settings and click OK. Remove your background layer. Make any color changes you like before saving the vector. Multiple vectors?

 

Image Trace to Vector Path – Feedback for Affinity Designer on Desktop – Affinity | Forum

 
How affinity can think that this is not an important feature to include in Designer is beyond me. Read More.