Convert PNG to DXF
Cutter software wants outlines, not pixels. Trace the PNG into closed paths here, then export DXF for LightBurn, LibreCAD, Fusion 360 or your plotter.
- Input
- PNG
- Output
- DXF [soon]
- Engine
- WASM, in your tab
- Price
- Free preview
Drop an image here, or paste
Your image is never uploaded. It is traced in this tab.Open the full converter
Preset
- 01Logo16 colours
- 02Line artBlack & white
- 03Photo64 colours
- 04Embroidery8 colours · Cutout
- 05Vinyl4 colours · Cutout
- 06Laser — set for this pageBlack & white · Polygon
- Output · SVG · PDF · EPS [soon] · DXF [soon]
- Preview free · download with Pro €9.00 / month
- Your file stays in this tab
The DXF exporter lands in week 4. Tracing and preview work today; export is disabled until then.
Why vectortrace
- Ticket 1 / 3
In-browser and private
The engine is WebAssembly running in a worker on your own machine. Your image is never uploaded — so there is nothing to leak, nothing to delete, and nothing to take on trust.
- Ticket 2 / 3
Editable paths, not a wrapper
The engine groups the image into colour regions, takes the boundary between them and fits curves to it. What comes out is real geometry — one fill per region, every node yours to move — produced in the tab and never on a server.
- Ticket 3 / 3
Formats print and production use
SVG and PDF today; EPS and DXF for cutters, engravers and embroidery software as the exporters land. Real files, opened in Illustrator, Inkscape and LibreCAD — not an SVG with a JPEG inside it.
Format facts
| Format facts | PNG · in | DXF · out |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Raster. A grid of pixels. | Vector. AutoCAD Drawing Interchange — geometry and layers, no fills. |
| Scaling | Blurs or pixelates past its native size. | Sharp at any size, and it carries real drawing units. |
| Colour | Up to 16.7 million colours with 8-bit alpha. Lossless. | None as a fill. Colour in DXF is a property of the layer. |
| Editable in | Photoshop, GIMP, Affinity Photo. | LibreCAD, AutoCAD, Fusion 360, LightBurn, most cutter software. |
| Typical use | Screenshots, web images, marks exported from a design tool. | Laser cutters, CNC routers, plasma tables, vinyl plotters. |
Worth knowing
DXF describes geometry and layers. It has no fills, no gradients and no alpha — a cutter only needs to know where the tool goes. That is why the laser preset traces binary and fits straight polygon segments rather than splines: a machine controller interpolates arcs its own way, and a polyline says exactly one thing.
DXF also carries drawing units, which SVG does not by default. The size you cut is the size in the file, so decide the physical dimensions before you export rather than scaling in the machine software afterwards.
Interior holes matter. A letter O has to be two closed contours with opposite winding or the cutter fills it in. Cutout mode produces disjoint regions for exactly this reason.
How it works
Drop the PNG
Drop the mark or drawing you want to cut. It is traced in this tab.
Use the laser preset
Binary trace, polygon fitting, high coordinate precision. Check that interior holes are separate closed contours.
Export DXF
Open the result in LightBurn, LibreCAD or your machine software and confirm the units before you cut.
Benchmark
Measured, not marketed. The corpus, the method and every figure the run produced are published in full.
Methodology → /benchmarks- boundary error, p95
- 0.39 px
- region-count error
- 0.113
- node-count ratio
- 6.35×
Questions
- 01Which DXF version is written?
- The exporter targets AutoCAD R2000 (AC1015), which is the version cutter and CAM software reads most reliably. It is also the version most sign and laser tools list as their recommended import.
- 02Why does my cut have double lines?
- A traced outline is a filled region boundary, so a stroke in the original becomes two contours — one for each side of the line. That is correct for cutting a shape out and wrong for engraving a line; for engraving, cut on a centreline in your machine software.
- 03Can I set the size in millimetres?
- DXF carries units, so the exported drawing has a real size. Set the physical dimensions before export rather than scaling afterwards, which is where rounding creeps in.
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