Image to SVG Converter

This tool traces a raster image, a PNG, JPG, or scanned sketch, into vector paths, converting flat pixels into an editable SVG. This is genuinely useful for turning a photographed logo, a hand drawn sketch, or a low resolution image into a scalable, editable vector, a fundamentally different process from any color, code, or size tool in this collection, since it generates new path geometry rather than working with existing SVG markup.

What tracing actually does

A raster image is a fixed grid of colored pixels, it has no inherent shapes, only color values at coordinates. Tracing analyzes that grid, groups pixels into regions of similar color, and fits vector paths, curves and straight lines defined mathematically rather than as pixels, around the boundaries of each region. The result is a genuinely different kind of file: an SVG built this way can be scaled to any size with perfectly crisp edges, and because it's made of real paths, individual shapes can be selected, recolored, or edited afterward the way a pixel image never could be.

What style and color count control

The style setting changes how aggressively the tracer smooths or sharpens the curves it fits to each color region, Sharp keeps corners crisp and geometric, Curvy and Smoothed round everything into flowing shapes, and Detailed preserves more small features at the cost of a more complex, heavier result. The color count controls how many distinct colors the image is reduced to before tracing, fewer colors produce a cleaner, more poster-like result with fewer paths, while more colors preserve subtler gradients and shading at the cost of a larger, more intricate file. A simple logo usually looks best with a low color count and a sharp style, while a detailed illustration benefits from more colors and a smoother setting.

Where this fits into real design work

A logo that only exists as a low resolution photo of a printed business card, an old scanned brand mark with no surviving source file, or a hand drawn sketch that needs to become a clean icon are all situations where redrawing the shape from scratch in a vector editor is slow, and tracing gives a genuinely useful starting point instead. It's rarely a perfect one-click result for anything beyond simple, high-contrast source images, the traced output is a strong first draft to clean up rather than a finished asset, but that's still a significant head start compared to manually plotting every curve.

What tracing isn't good at

Tracing works best on images with clear, high-contrast edges, like logos, line art, and simple illustrations, and works noticeably worse on photographs, gradients, or anything with soft, blurry boundaries between colors, since the tracer has to guess where one region ends and another begins. Complex source images can produce a large number of small, messy paths rather than a few clean shapes, and fine detail like text or thin lines can break apart or disappear entirely depending on the color count and style chosen. It's worth trying a couple of different style and color combinations on a tricky image rather than assuming the first result is the best one available.

Runs entirely in your browser

The image you upload is processed locally on your device, using your browser's own canvas rendering, it's never uploaded to a server. Once you have a traced result, our SVG Editor is the natural next step for cleaning up individual paths, and our Palette Extractor can pull out the exact colors used in the result if you need them documented or reused elsewhere, both part of the same SVG & Design collection this tool belongs to.