Convert an image to SVG by tracing it into vectors

Tracing, not wrapping: what this image to SVG converter does

There are two very different ways to turn a picture into an .svg file. One simply puts the pixels inside an SVG: the file ends in .svg, but it scales exactly like the PNG did. The other is vector tracing: areas of colour become shapes with smooth outlines. This page does the second.

Tracing is what people mean when they ask to vectorize an image or turn a PNG to vector art. So a PNG to SVG made here holds real shapes, not the same pixels in a new wrapper. Our guide to raster vs vector explains why that difference matters.

• The traced SVG stays sharp at any size, from a business card to a large print.
• Its shapes can be recoloured, moved and edited in a vector program.
• For a logo or an icon, the file is often small.

How to convert PNG to SVG

1. Press Select image and pick your logo, icon or drawing, or several of them. PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF all open. A logo photographed on an iPhone is saved as HEIC, which is not in that list, so turn it into a PNG with HEIC to PNG or a JPG with HEIC to JPG first.
2. Pick a Style: Logo or icon, Illustration, or Black and white.
3. Set the Colours, the Detail and the Smoothing, and switch on Remove the background if you want it gone.
4. Watch the preview on the stage. Split view and Hold to compare set the trace against your picture.
5. Press Trace. When the screen says Your SVG is ready, save it. logo.png comes out as logo.svg. Several pictures are each traced with the same settings, and you can save them one by one or all together as a zip.

A JPG to SVG works the same way. A .jpeg file is a JPG under a longer name, so JPEG to SVG is no different. The same goes for WebP to SVG, and for GIF, BMP and AVIF pictures: open the file as it is, with no need to change its format first.

The preview is a real trace of your picture, scaled to 800 pixels on its longest side so it comes back quickly after each change. The stage says Tracing the preview… while it works. Under the settings, Shapes and Size tell you how many shapes the SVG holds and how big the file is.

When you press Trace, the picture is traced again at up to 2,000 pixels on its longest side, so for a bigger picture the SVG holds more detail than the preview. The SVG keeps your picture's own width and height, and scales from there.

The settings, one by one

For an SVG in colour, start with as many colours as your logo really has. A two-colour logo traced with 8 colours can pick up stray in-between shades along its edges; set Colours to 2 or 3 and it comes out cleaner. Raise Detail if a small part, such as a thin line or a dot, goes missing; lower it if the file is larger than you want.

Black and white SVG

Black and white traces the picture in pure black and pure white, nothing in between. It suits signatures, stamps, stencils, line drawings and anything printed or cut in one colour. Switch on Remove the background as well, and the colour around the drawing, usually the white, is left out, so you get a black and white SVG with only the black shapes on a clear background.

What traces well, and what does not

Vector tracing works best on pictures made of clear areas of flat colour. The panel says so too: photos turn into thousands of shapes and big files, and the result looks painted rather than photographic.

• Good: logos, icons, badges, simple illustrations, signatures, scanned line art and drawings in a few colours.
• Fair: detailed illustrations with gradients, which come out as bands of colour.
• Poor: photos, and screenshots with lots of small text.

If your picture is a photo and a program or a form simply will not take its format, change the format rather than tracing it: AVIF to JPG, for example, makes a picture saved from the web open anywhere. To get the words out of a screenshot or a scan, rather than their shapes, copy the text from the picture instead. Going the other way, a plain .txt file becomes SVG pages of sharp letters when you convert text to SVG.

Start from the biggest, cleanest copy of the logo you have. A blurry, small or heavily compressed JPG has fuzzy edges, and the trace follows the fuzz; a little Smoothing helps there. If the logo sits in a larger picture, crop it first, so only the logo is traced.

For a picture bigger than 800 pixels, the Shapes and Size numbers come from the preview and are marked ≈. Pictures larger than 2,000 pixels are scaled down before tracing, and the panel says so.

Using your SVG, and privacy

An SVG opens in any browser, in vector design programs and in the software many cutting machines and print shops use. Because it is made of shapes, you can scale it for a sign or a sticker, and change its colours by editing the shapes.

Want website icons from the same logo? The favicon generator opens SVG files and makes favicon.ico and the app icons in one go.

• Nothing is uploaded. The tracing runs in your browser, and our server does no picture work.
• It is free, with no account and no watermark. Image tools are not counted in the free daily limit, which applies to document conversions only.
• It works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox. Very large pictures may be too big for your browser.

The privacy policy, linked at the foot of every page, sets out how we treat files.