Image to SVG
Trace a logo, icon or drawing into clean vector shapes in their own colours. Save it as SVG for the web and print, or as DXF with one layer per colour for a cutting plotter — entirely in your browser.
From pixels to shapes: what tracing in colour really does
A PNG or JPG is a grid of coloured dots. Enlarge it and the edges turn into steps; send it to a printer or a cutting plotter and it needs lines, not dots. Tracing turns those dots into mathematical shapes, in three steps: it picks the colours the image is made of, it decides for every pixel which of those colours it belongs to, and it follows the edge of every colour area and writes it as a smooth curve. A small image is first enlarged smoothly, up to four times, so the edge of a letter lands on its true position instead of on the pixel grid.
Choosing the number of colours
This is the setting that matters most. A flat logo in three colours needs exactly three, plus the background. The tool counts what it sees when you open the image, and it ignores the soft blended pixels along the edges of shapes: those are not real colours but the smoothing between two. If two similar colours of your logo end up as one, raise the number. If the shading of a scanned logo produces colours you do not want, lower it, or click those colours away in the row of swatches.
SVG for the web and print, DXF for cutting
The SVG holds one filled shape per colour, stacked from the largest at the bottom to the smallest on top, and opens in any browser, in Illustrator and in Inkscape. The DXF holds the same outlines as closed polylines on one layer per colour, with the exact colour in the layer name, so sign-making and vinyl-cutting software can cut each colour of foil separately. Where two colours meet, the lower one runs a fraction of a pixel underneath the upper one, so no gap ever shows between them. The size is the size of your image in pixels: scale it to millimetres in your cutting software before you cut.
When tracing is the wrong tool
If you have the original artwork as a vector file, use that: no tracing beats the real thing. A small logo full of JPEG blocks traces worse than a clean one, so start from the largest, sharpest copy you have. And for a black-and-white drawing that has to go into CAD, our Image to DXF tool traces black and white only and lets you set the split by hand.
What this does, and its honest limits
The tool groups the pixels of your image into a few colours, then traces the edge of every colour area into smooth curves, with sharp corners where the artwork has them. It works best on logos, icons, illustrations and drawings with flat colours. A photograph can be traced too, but it becomes a poster of colour bands rather than a faithful copy. Gradients become steps, and text becomes shapes, not editable text.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The image is read, traced and written as SVG and DXF entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server and no copy is kept anywhere.
Why do the colour shapes overlap a little?
Each colour runs a fraction of a pixel underneath the colour on top of it, but only where they touch. That closes the hairline gaps that would otherwise show between two traced edges, and it is how layered vinyl is applied anyway.
Is it free?
Yes, without a daily limit, because it runs on your own computer. A free download carries a tiny CONVERTBURDA.COM text in the bottom-left corner, like our other CAD tools; a CAD plan, a day pass or Full access removes it.
