How to vectorize an image: turn pixels into clean, editable paths

Raster versus vector, in one minute

A raster image is a grid of coloured squares. A 500 × 500 logo holds 250,000 of them, and when you enlarge it the squares get bigger: edges turn jagged, then blurry. A vector image stores the same logo as a short list of shapes, each an outline made of lines and curves plus a fill colour. Enlarge it and the program simply redraws the curves at the new size, so edges stay perfectly sharp.

That is why print shops, sign makers, embroidery digitizers, cutting machines and lasers ask for vectors: a cutter follows paths, not pixels, and a banner printer needs artwork that holds up at two metres wide. SVG is the most widely supported vector format; Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Affinity, Canva, Cricut Design Space, LightBurn and every browser open it.

What tracing actually does

A tracer answers two questions about your image: which areas belong together, and where exactly their edges run. Vectorize.tools does it in three steps, all inside your browser:

• Pick the colours. In colour mode the image is reduced to the number of colours you choose (2 to 32). Each pixel is assigned to its nearest palette colour, so a logo with anti-aliased edges ends up with exactly its real colours instead of hundreds of in-between shades.
• Find the shapes. Pixels of the same colour that touch are grouped into regions. Specks smaller than the Detail setting allows are merged into their neighbours, which is what keeps JPEG noise out of the file.
• Fit the curves. The staircase outline of each region is simplified and fitted with straight lines and smooth Bézier curves. Smoothing decides where a corner stays a corner and where it becomes a curve.

In black and white mode the image is first split into ink and paper by a brightness threshold (or by comparing each pixel with its surroundings, when Even out lighting is on), then traced with Potrace, the classic single-colour tracer, which gives especially smooth curves with few nodes.

Nothing in these steps invents anything: every edge in the SVG is an edge that is in your pixels. That is the difference from asking an AI to redraw an image, covered in ChatGPT image to SVG.

Which settings to use

Each preset is a starting point; the tool picks one when you drop an image, and you can switch at any time. These are the values the presets set:

Colours is the biggest lever. Count the colours you can see in the original and set exactly that; one more if two similar shades are merging, one fewer if a stray in-between shade shows up as a thin outline around shapes.

Detail trades fidelity for a clean file. Raise it for fine text and thin lines; lower it for scans, JPEGs and anything with dust or noise.

Smoothing decides the character of the curves. Low values keep crisp corners (pixel art, geometric logos); high values give flowing curves with fewer nodes (hand lettering, organic shapes, cut files).

How fast it is, measured

We ran the engine this site uses on five test images and rendered each SVG back to pixels to measure how closely it matches the original. The error is the average difference per colour channel on a 0 to 255 scale, so lower is closer. Measured on 23 September 2026 in Node 22 on a server CPU; a phone takes about two to four times longer.

The pattern holds for every tracer: flat artwork converts almost perfectly into a tiny file, while a photo needs thousands of shapes to look like itself and is never an exact copy. For photos, fewer colours make a bolder poster look and a much smaller file.

Getting the source image right

• Use the largest, sharpest version you have. Tracing cannot recover detail that is not in the pixels. A logo under 1000 pixels wide is enlarged automatically before tracing, but a blurry source still traces blurry; enlarging it first with an upscaler helps more.
• Remove busy backgrounds first. For a photo of a product, a pet or a person, cut the subject out with Clipout and trace the transparent PNG. Transparent areas stay empty in the SVG.
• Crop to the artwork. Every extra area costs colours and paths.
• Avoid heavy JPEG compression. The blocky artefacts around edges become extra shapes. A PNG export of the same artwork traces cleaner.

Preparing the SVG for its destination

• Cricut Design Space: upload the SVG as a vector image^[1]. Use Layers set to Cut out so colours do not stack on top of each other, and resize in Design Space before cutting. Details: SVG for Cricut and Silhouette.
• Silhouette Studio: Silhouette lists SVG import among the features of its Business Edition^[2]; without it, use the PNG export and Silhouette's own trace.
• Lasers (LightBurn, Glowforge, xTool): all three import SVG^[3][4][5][6]. The shapes are filled; set each to cut, score or engrave. Details: laser cutting and engraving.
• Embroidery: keep to 4 to 6 colours and let your digitizing software turn the shapes into stitches. Details: embroidery prep.
• Print and web: SVG works as is. For a print shop that wants PNG, use the PNG export at the width they ask for, up to 8,192 pixels on a computer.

Privacy: why nothing is uploaded

Most online converters upload your image to a server and trace it there. Vectorize.tools ships the tracing engine to your browser as WebAssembly instead, so your image is decoded, traced and exported on your own device. That is also why it is free without limits: a trace costs the site nothing. You can confirm it in your browser's network panel, and after the first visit the tool keeps working offline.