Vectorising an image, from upload to a result you can trust
Vectorising is a measuring job before it is a drawing job. The tracer reads the pixel grid you hand it, works out where one colour stops and the next begins — the half-tones along a softened edge say where that boundary really sits — and writes those boundaries out as curves. Nothing else goes in: no library of logos, no learned model, no opinion about what the picture was meant to be.
That is also the limit, said plainly: tracing cannot put back detail the file never held. A 180-pixel-wide mark scraped off a web page becomes a crisp, scalable set of outlines — but outlines of a 180-pixel-wide mark, and a tagline that was two pixels tall is a grey smear that stays a smear. The tracer does not read type as type, it does not lift a subject off its background beyond the transparency already in the file, and it takes one image per conversion.
So hold a loop in mind, not a button: convert, look hard at the preview, change one thing, convert again. Nearly all of the outcome hangs on one number, the colour count.
How it works
- Start from the best copy you can find — the largest, least compressed version of the picture, as PNG, JPEG or WEBP, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels.
- Crop away everything you do not want traced, such as a background, a drop shadow or a screenshot border, before you upload it.
- Set the colour count to match what the picture is: 2 for a silhouette or cut line, 4–8 for a flat logo, 10–16 for a sticker or badge, 24 and up for shaded artwork.
- Choose the draw style and shape stacking for whatever happens to the file next, tick the output formats the destination asks for, and add a width and height in millimetres if the piece is physical.
- Convert, read the 800 px preview properly — edges, shape count, smallest text — change the colour count and run it again if it needs it, then sign in with Google (free) to download.
Who this is for
Most people reading this were sent here by somebody else's requirement: the print shop wants outlines instead of pixels, the cutter drives a head along a path and can do nothing with a picture of one, a marketplace rejected the artwork as too small. The word "vector" arrived with no explanation, and the task is to satisfy a machine you will never see.
The second group is the one this page is really for: people who tried already, got back something melted or shattered, and cannot tell whether the tool or the picture was at fault. Usually neither — it is a mismatch between the two. A flat logo traced at 40 colours breaks into confetti; a shaded badge traced at 4 collapses into a puddle.
It is also worth knowing when not to bother: if the artwork will only ever sit at one size on a screen, what you have is fine.
Settings we suggest
Colour count (2–64) is the decision that matters. Two gives one silhouette with a single clean contour: stencils, cut lines, anything that must come out as one shape. Four to eight holds a flat logo or icon — the colours the designer used, nothing in between. Ten to sixteen suits stickers and badges. Twenty-four and up is for shading, and returns bands rather than a gradient, each tone its own closed region; a photograph pushed towards 64 mostly buys tiny shapes and a longer wait.
Shape stacking decides what those shapes do to each other. Cut-outs writes every region as its own closed contour with the area covered by the shapes above it removed: nothing overlaps, a hole is a genuine hole, a cutter follows each line once. Stacked leaves the lower shapes whole and paints the upper ones over them — easier to pull apart by hand, but the shape you drag away may leave a surprise behind. For a machine, take cut-outs.
Pick the output for the destination, not the extension you recognise: SVG for editors, browsers and most cutting software; PDF for a print shop, one page of genuine cubic curves; EPS where an older print or sign workflow asks for it by name; DXF for CAD and CAM, written as R2010 (AC1024), outlines only, one layer per colour. PNG output is not vector, just the finished shapes drawn back to pixels. Tick several and a ZIP comes too. A width and height in millimetres reach all four vector formats: the SVG carries them as its width and height, the DXF is written at that scale and names millimetres in its header, and the PDF and EPS page boxes hold the same physical size in points. Left blank, SVG and DXF sit at 96 pixels to 25.4 mm and the PDF and EPS pages keep the traced pixel dimensions, read as points.
Drop an image here
or click to choose one
Questions
How do I tell whether a result is good?
Judge the preview, with three checks. Look along the edges: smooth curves following the artwork, neither stair-stepped nor wandering off the line. Count the shapes — a flat mark should return roughly the number of regions you could point at in the original; speckles mean too many colours. Then check the smallest text or thinnest line, which breaks first and breaks quietly.
The result is disappointing. What should I change first?
In this order. Find a better source: a larger, less compressed copy beats any setting change. Then lower the colour count — most disappointing traces are over-coloured, and 32 down to 8 fixes much of what looks like a broken tool. Then crop, so the shapes go on the subject rather than the background. Only then is it fair to blame the picture.
Will vectorising sharpen a small or blurry image?
No, and this is the honest limit: scalable is not the same as detailed. Curves are measured from the pixels you supplied, so a blurred edge becomes a smooth, confident curve in slightly the wrong place, and detail that never reached the file cannot be recovered. A traced 200-pixel logo enlarges to clean edges around exactly the information that logo held.
How long does it take, and how big can the image be?
Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; fine-line or noisy images take longer. If a conversion does not finish within 60 seconds it stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image. Inputs run to 25 MB and 40 megapixels; anything above 1.5 megapixels is downscaled before tracing, so the output's pixel dimensions are the downscaled ones — use the millimetre fields for a physical measurement.
Do I need an account?
Converting and studying the result are open to everyone: the preview is 800 px on its longest side and carries no watermark, so you can settle the colour count first. Downloading the SVG, PDF, EPS or DXF needs a free Google sign-in; it is free and watermark-free either way. Anonymous visitors get 10 conversions per hour, signed-in accounts 60 per hour and 300 per day. Download links expire after 1 hour; uploaded images and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule.