Convert an image to SVG vector

A PNG or JPG is a grid of tiny coloured squares, called pixels. When you enlarge it, the squares grow and the edges turn blurry or jagged. An image 200 pixels wide cannot be used on a banner two metres across.

An SVG has no pixels. It describes shapes: a circle here, a curve there, filled with a given colour. The computer redraws those shapes at whatever size you need, so the result is just as sharp on a business card as on a shop front.

An SVG logo often weighs a few kilobytes. It opens in a web browser and in drawing programs such as Inkscape, Illustrator, Figma or Canva.

Vectorising finds the outlines in an image. It works well when the image is made of flat areas of colour with clean edges, and badly when it is made of gradients and fine detail.

A photo holds thousands of shades: vectorising it produces a poster-like picture in flat areas, and a heavy file. For a photo, keep the JPG.

• Good: a logo, an icon, a pictogram, a signature, an ink sketch, a black and white drawing.
• Fair: an illustration in a few colours, a child's drawing, a simple poster.
• Poorly suited: a photo, a screenshot, a gradient spread across the whole image, very small text.
• A tiny or heavily compressed image gives less detail to recover: start from the largest, sharpest file you have.

Start from the best file you have: the largest one, a PNG rather than a JPG, and never a screenshot or a photo of a screen. JPG adds noise around the edges, which the tracing then has to ignore.

Choose "Logo", then zoom in on the corners and the letters in the preview. If details are missing, raise the number of colours or the level of detail. If an edge looks shaky, lower the level of detail or raise the speck clean-up.

A logo traced automatically is not the same as a logo redrawn by a designer. The curves are close to the original, but corners, circles and letters can stay slightly uneven. Before you send it to print or to a cutting machine, open the SVG in a drawing program and fix what needs fixing.

SVG is the format most trades and web teams ask for. Here is what you can do with it.

Keep the original image next to it: the SVG does not replace it if you need a photo.

• Print: a printer can enlarge the logo on a poster, a banner or a stamp without losing sharpness. Ask which format they prefer.
• Signage, engraving and cutting: vinyl cutters, laser engravers and CNC software import SVG. Check the shapes in the software before you start the machine.
• Websites: an SVG of a few KB loads fast and stays sharp on high-resolution screens. Remove the background so it sits on any colour.
• Social media and documents: export a PNG at 2× or 4× if a platform does not accept SVG.

The four types of image set everything at once. You can then adjust each slider.

• Number of colours: how many shades the SVG keeps. A simple logo often has 2 to 6 colours. The more colours, the heavier the file.
• Black level (line drawing): what counts as black. Raise it if lines disappear, lower it if noise shows up.
• Level of detail: from simplified to faithful. More detail follows the outlines more closely but adds points.
• Curve smoothness: from sharp corners to soft curves. Low for a logo with crisp corners, high for an organic drawing.
• Ignore small specks: removes paper grain, dust and isolated dots.
• Remove the background: makes the colour around the image transparent, such as the white around a logo. Areas of that colour enclosed by the drawing, like the white of an eye, stay in place.
• Enlarge small images: an icon a few dozen pixels wide is enlarged before tracing for smoother curves. Very large images are reduced to at most 1600 pixels wide so the work stays fast.