Convert PNG to SVG
Drop a PNG and get an SVG made of real paths — one fill per colour, editable in Illustrator or Inkscape. The image is traced in this tab and never uploaded.
- Input
- PNG
- Output
- SVG
- 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
- 01Logo — set for this page16 colours
- 02Line artBlack & white
- 03Photo64 colours
- 04Embroidery8 colours · Cutout
- 05Vinyl4 colours · Cutout
- 06LaserBlack & white · Polygon
- Output · SVG · PDF · EPS [soon] · DXF [soon]
- Preview free · download with Pro €9.00 / month
- Your file stays in this tab
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 | SVG · out |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Raster. A grid of pixels. | Vector. Paths described in XML. |
| Scaling | Blurs or pixelates past its native size. | Sharp at any size. |
| Colour | Up to 16.7 million colours with 8-bit alpha. Lossless. | One solid fill per path, in a palette you can edit by hand. |
| Editable in | Photoshop, GIMP, Affinity Photo. | Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Affinity Designer, a text editor. |
| Typical use | Screenshots, web images, marks exported from a design tool. | Web, icons, print artwork, the input to a cutter workflow. |
Worth knowing
A PNG stores a grid of pixels; an SVG stores outlines. Converting one to the other means deciding where an edge is, and a PNG has already blurred that decision into its anti-aliased pixels. The tracer groups the image into colour regions, walks the boundary between them and fits curves to it, so what you get is a handful of Bezier segments per shape rather than a staircase of pixel steps.
PNG carries an 8-bit alpha channel, so transparency survives the trace: fully transparent pixels become holes in the geometry rather than a white rectangle behind the mark. If your PNG has a checkerboard background it was flattened before you got it, and the checkerboard will be traced as artwork.
The logo preset is the default here because most PNGs people vectorise are flat marks. For a scan or an inked drawing switch to line art, and for a photograph switch to photo — the palette size and the speckle filter are what change.
How it works
Drop the PNG
Drop, paste or choose a PNG. It is decoded by the browser and handed to the worker; nothing is sent anywhere.
Pick a preset
Start on logo for a flat mark, line art for a scan, photo for a photograph. The readouts show paths, nodes, colours and milliseconds as you change it.
Download the SVG
Check the preview at full zoom, then export. The SVG is written in the worker and saved straight from the tab.
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
- 01Does converting a PNG to SVG upload my file?
- No. The tracer is WebAssembly running in a Web Worker in this tab, so the pixels stay on your machine. There is no upload step, which is also why it keeps working with the network off.
- 02Will the SVG just have the PNG embedded inside it?
- No. Some converters wrap the original bitmap in an <image> element and call the result an SVG; it is the same pixels with an XML header, and it still blurs when you scale it. Every path here is traced geometry, so the file opens as editable outlines.
- 03Can I edit the SVG afterwards?
- Yes. The output is ordinary SVG — one path per colour region, with a plain fill — so Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Affinity Designer and a text editor all open it and all let you move a node.
- 04Is it free?
- Previews are free and unlimited — trace as many PNGs as you like, at any resolution. Downloading the file needs Pro at €9.00 per month, tax inclusive.
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