Image to SVG
Trace a PNG or JPG logo, icon or drawing into a clean, scalable SVG vector.
By Syed Mubashir Ali · Last updated
Which type to choose
The four types are starting points. Each sets the colours, smoothing and speck filter for that kind of image, and you can change any of them afterwards.
| Your image | Type | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| A logo, icon or badge | Logo | Colours are counted automatically; tick Transparent background to drop a plain background |
| A scanned sketch, signature or stamp | Line art | Move the darkness threshold until faint lines appear and paper texture doesn't |
| A drawing or flat illustration | Illustration | Start at 16 colours and add more if areas merge |
| A photo | Photo poster | Expect stylised, flat art; fewer colours give a bolder look |
Getting a cleaner trace
Most rough results come from the source image, not the settings. Crop away everything around the design first, so the tracer doesn't spend shapes on it. Use the biggest version of the image you can find: enlarging a small image doesn't add the detail the tracer needs. JPEG artefacts, the blotchy pixels around edges in a heavily compressed file, are the usual cause of specks, and Ignore specks set to Small or Medium removes most of them.
Then reduce rather than add. Fewer colours make cleaner shapes and smaller files, so try lowering the count until something important disappears, then go back one step. Check corners and thin lines at 2× or 4× zoom before you download.
- Image Cropper: crop to just the logo or drawing before you trace it.
- Background Remover: cut a subject out of a busy photo first, then trace it as a poster.
- Favicon Generator: turn a finished logo into favicons for a website.
How to Use Image to SVG
- 1Drop in a PNG, JPG or WebP image. It's traced straight away with the Logo settings, and the result appears under the controls.
- 2Pick the type of image: Logo, Illustration, Line art or Photo poster. Each one sets the colours, detail and smoothing to suit.
- 3Fine-tune if you need to: the number of colours (or let it count them), Detail, Curve fit and Ignore specks. It traces again a moment after each change.
- 4Tick Transparent background to remove the background colour around the design, or, for line art, everything except the black lines.
- 5Drag the slider across the preview to compare with the original and zoom in to check the edges, then Download SVG or copy the code.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of images convert well?
Logos, icons, badges, signatures, stamps, line drawings and flat illustrations: anything made of areas of solid colour with clear edges. Start from the largest, sharpest copy you have, because the tracer can only follow edges that are in the pixels. A photo works too, but it comes out as flat, poster-style art made of a few dozen colours, not as a copy of the photo.
Will the SVG look exactly like my image?
Close, not identical. Tracing turns each area of colour into a shape with smooth outlines, so a gradient becomes bands of colour, fine texture is simplified, and soft shadows become solid shapes. Text becomes outlines rather than editable text. Compare the two with the slider before you download, and add colours or choose Accurate curve fit if detail is missing.
How does the transparent background work?
It finds the most common colour around the edge of the image and removes it wherever it touches the edge, then traces what's left. The same colour inside the design, such as the white of a letter on a coloured badge, is kept. If your PNG already has a transparent background, that stays transparent. For line art it keeps only the black lines.
Can I use the SVG with a cutting machine or laser?
Yes. The file is made of filled shapes, which is what cutting-machine and laser software that imports SVG expects. Each colour is its own set of shapes, so the software can treat colours as separate layers. Use the Logo or Line art type with as few colours as you can, and raise Ignore specks so tiny stray pieces don't turn into cuts.
Why is my SVG file large?
Every colour and every small detail adds shapes. To make it smaller, use fewer colours, choose Simple curve fit, raise Ignore specks, or trace at a lower Detail. A logo usually ends up a few kilobytes; a photo poster with many colours can run to hundreds.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The tracing runs in your browser, in a background thread so the page stays responsive, and nothing is sent to a server or stored. You can even disconnect from the internet once the page has loaded.
About Image to SVG
Image to SVG turns a raster image, a grid of pixels, into a vector drawing made of shapes, which stays sharp at any size: on a business card, a shop sign or a cut vinyl sticker. It's the job designers once did by hand, redrawing a logo from a low-resolution copy, done automatically.
The tracing uses imagetracerjs, an open-source tracer, running in a background thread in your browser. Before it traces, the tool chooses the palette itself: it looks only at pixels inside flat areas, ignoring the blended pixels along edges, and groups them into colours. That keeps small details like a line of dark text from being merged into a neighbouring colour, a common way for automatic tracing to go wrong. For logos it also counts the colours for you.
The result is a standard SVG file that opens in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Canva and web browsers, and can be edited there: recolour a shape, delete a stray piece, or set the text again in the real font.