PNG to SVG Tracer

Image tracer

Trace a drawing, scan or piece of artwork into vector art. Compare the result with your original as you adjust, then download the SVG.

How to use it

  1. Drop in a picture. Drawings, scans, clip art and artwork all work.
  2. Start with the Illustration style, or choose Black and white for pencil and ink drawings.
  3. Drag the comparison line across the preview and tune colors until the trace matches the look you want.
  4. Download the SVG.

Tracing drawings and scans

Pencil sketches and ink drawings are the easiest scans to trace. Use the black and white style and move the threshold until the lines are solid without picking up the grain of the paper. A sheet photographed in even light, straight on, will trace far better than one shot at an angle with a shadow across it.

For colored artwork, increase the color count a little at a time. Sixteen colors captures most illustrations. Past that, you mostly add small shapes that make the file heavier without changing how it looks.

What to expect from photographs

A tracer cannot recover detail that is not there. Photos come out as posterized artwork: flat patches of color with hard edges. That can look striking for portraits and landscapes, and it works as a graphic style, but it is not a way to make a photo resolution-independent.

What the settings do

Style
Picks starting values for the kind of picture you have. You can still change every setting afterward.
Colors
More colors keep more detail and make the file larger.
Soften
Smooths grain and compression noise before tracing, which gives cleaner edges on scans.
Remove small specks
Ignores dust and stray dots. Raise it for dirty scans.

What people use it for

  • Digitizing hand-drawn logos and lettering
  • Turning clip art into scalable graphics
  • Making stencil or poster-style artwork from a picture
  • Rescuing old artwork that only exists as a scan

Questions

What file types can I trace?

PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF and BMP. For animated GIFs, the first frame is used.

Why do thin lines break up?

Thin lines are only a pixel or two wide, so the tracer can lose them. Use a larger source image if you have one, lower the Remove small specks value, and in black and white mode raise the threshold slightly.

Can I trace a screenshot?

Yes, and screenshots with flat colors trace well. Text in screenshots is small, so zoom in on the preview to check it before you download.

Is my file uploaded anywhere?

No. Tracing and file creation happen in your browser, using code that is part of this page. Your image is not sent to a server. You can check this in your browser's network tab while you use the tool.

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