Rasterlessvector

Turn a JPG into a real vector file

A JPG is rarely clean artwork. It is what a camera writes, what a phone shares, and what you get when the only copy of a logo is a screenshot of a web page. So "JPG to vector" is two different jobs wearing one file extension: flattening a photograph into vector shapes, and rescuing flat artwork that lossy compression has chewed up. They want opposite colour counts, so this page keeps them apart.

Take the photograph first; that is the expectation worth correcting. Tracing a photo does not hand you a photograph made of curves. The tracer segments the picture into a fixed number of flat colour regions: shading turns into bands, skin becomes three or four tones, a soft background collapses into blobs. What comes out is posterised and stylised — the look you want on a shirt, a poster or a cut stencil, enlarging to poster scale without pixel edges, but not a faithful reproduction. If the photograph has to stay photographic, keep the raster.

The logo case runs the other way. That artwork was already flat; JPEG is what damaged it. Lossy encoding works on 8×8 pixel blocks and discards colour detail faster than brightness, so a hard edge returns wrapped in a faint ringing halo and a solid red field comes back mottled. Left alone, the tracer faithfully vectorises that damage. Told how many colours the mark actually has, it steps straight over it.

Drop an image here

or click to choose one

PNG · JPG · WEBP

How it works

  1. Upload your JPG — a photo, a scan, or a screenshot of a logo. PNG and WEBP work too; one image per conversion, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels, and anything above 1.5 megapixels is downscaled before tracing.
  2. Decide which job this is. For a photograph start at 12 colours; for a logo, set the number of ink colours you can count in the mark, usually 2 to 6.
  3. Choose outputs: SVG to keep editing, PDF or EPS for a print shop, DXF for cutting machines, PNG for a cleaned-up raster. Pick several and you also get a ZIP.
  4. Add a width and height in millimetres if the piece has a known physical size, then check the 800 px preview.
  5. Sign in with Google (free) to download the files.
A shaded badge JPEG on the left, the same badge traced into flat vector colour regions on the right — source image A shaded badge JPEG on the left, the same badge traced into flat vector colour regions on the right — vector result
A shaded badge JPEG on the left, the same badge traced into flat vector colour regions on the right

Who this is for

This page is for people who did not get to choose the source file. A designer inherits a client's logo as a JPEG pulled off an old website. A print shop is handed a snapshot and asked for spot colours. A craft cutter wants a silhouette out of a holiday photo. A print-on-demand seller needs artwork that survives enlargement.

Vectors solve the scaling half: curves and closed shapes stay crisp at whatever size you output, and colours become objects you edit rather than pixels you retouch. They cannot invent detail the JPEG no longer holds.

One image goes in per conversion; accepted inputs are PNG, JPEG and WEBP. There is no learned model involved — this is a geometric tracer: colour segmentation, an explicit anti-aliasing model and curve fitting. That is why the colour count matters more than anything else. It is free and watermark-free; you can run a conversion and study the preview first, and downloading asks for a free Google sign-in.

Settings we suggest

Colours decides everything, and the right number differs completely between the two cases.

For a photograph, start at 12. Six to ten gives a bold screen-print look with clean separations; twelve to sixteen keeps a face or a product recognisable; past twenty-four you are spending file size on slivers of compression noise, and it still will not read as a photograph. Two colours turns the shot into a black-and-white stencil — the right answer for vinyl and laser work.

For a logo recovered from a JPEG, count the ink colours in the mark and set that number, plus one if a background colour is worth keeping. Most marks land between two and six; a single-colour wordmark belongs at 2. Reaching for a high number is the classic mistake: it hands you the compression halo as extra shapes around every letter. The range is 2 to 64.

Leave draw style on Fill shapes for both cases; Stroke edges is for contours you will follow with a pen or a blade. Shape stacking on Cut-outs gives every colour its own closed region, with holes where another sits on top — what screen-print separations and vinyl need; Stacked paints them over each other instead. Group by colour puts each tone in its own group, so a separation selects at once.

DXF is R2010 (AC1024) and holds outlines only, LWPOLYLINE and SPLINE, one layer per colour; it opens in AutoCAD 2010 and later, Fusion 360, LightBurn and Inkscape, and it states millimetres in its header, so the machine opens it at size rather than guessing the unit. The millimetre field is written into all four vector formats — geometry in the SVG and DXF, page box in the PDF and EPS; leave it empty and 96 px = 25.4 mm, with the PDF and EPS page sized from the pixel dimensions.

Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; a detailed photograph at a high colour count takes longer, and if a conversion does not finish within 60 seconds it stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image.

Questions

Will my photo still look like a photo after I vectorise it?

No. Continuous shading becomes a fixed number of flat regions, so you get a posterised, stylised version: excellent on shirts, posters, stickers and stencils, but not a faithful reproduction. Keep the raster if the photograph itself is the deliverable.

How many colours should I use for a logo I only have as a JPEG?

Count the ink colours in the mark and use that number, plus one for a background worth keeping. Two to six covers most logos; a single-colour wordmark belongs at 2. A high count cannot recover lost detail — it vectorises the compression halo instead of the letters.

Why does my traced JPG have speckles and coloured fringes at the edges?

That is the compression, not the tracer. Lossy encoding works on 8×8 pixel blocks and keeps less colour detail than brightness, leaving ringing beside hard edges and mottling inside flat fields. Lowering the colour count merges those artefacts into the surrounding colour.

My JPG has a white background — can I get a transparent vector?

JPEG carries no transparency channel, so that white is real pixels, traced like any other colour. At higher counts it arrives as a white shape you can select and delete in a vector editor; at 2 colours you usually get a single silhouette contour.

What happens to the JPG I upload?

Download links expire after 1 hour. Uploaded images and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule and are never used for anything else. Anonymous use is capped at 10 conversions per hour; signed-in users get 60 per hour and 300 per day.

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