Vectorize Image

A PNG or JPG is a grid of coloured pixels, so it turns blocky when you enlarge it. Vectorizing traces the shapes in that grid and describes them as outlines filled with colour, which is what an SVG holds. An outline can be drawn at any size, so the picture stays sharp on a business card and on a billboard, and you can edit its shapes and colours in a design app.

Logos, icons, badges, clip art, line drawings and signatures: anything made of clear shapes and a handful of flat colours. They trace into clean outlines and a small file, usually a few kilobytes.

Photos work too, but there is no shape in a photo to find, only shading. Vectorize turns a photo into flat areas of colour, like a poster or a screen print. It is a stylised version, not a copy, and the file is much bigger.

Logo keeps a few flat colours and crisp corners, and shapes share their edges exactly, so no background peeks through between them. Drawing makes black lines and shapes with nothing behind them, which suits sketches, line art, stamps and signatures. Photo keeps more colours and simplifies the picture into flat areas. Each sets its own colours, smoothness and speck removal, which you can then change.

No. The tracing runs in your browser, on your own device, so your logo or drawing is never sent anywhere. The tracer itself is fetched the first time you press Vectorize, and only then.

Yes. Where your image is see-through, the SVG has no shape at all, so a logo cut out from its background stays cut out. Pixels that are less than half visible count as background. Drawings never get a background: their paper is left out.

Tracing redraws the picture from outlines, so fine detail is simplified: soft gradients become steps of flat colour and tiny specks are dropped. More colours and less speck removal keep more detail; fewer colours and a higher smoothness make a simpler, smaller file. Compare shows the two side by side so you can judge.

Yes. To stay quick and within your device’s memory, a big image is traced from a smaller copy: up to 1 megapixel for photos, 2 for logos and 4 for drawings, and half that on phones and tablets. A very busy picture, such as noise, a dithered image or a halftone, is traced smaller still. The SVG still shows at the image’s full size, and the image says when it was traced smaller. A photo traced at 1 megapixel takes a second or two.

No. Image Trace in a desktop design app does the same job, but here you need no account, subscription or install. The SVG opens in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, Affinity Designer and any browser, so you can keep editing it there.