PNG to SVG - Tracing, Not Un-Rasterizing
Nothing can turn a PNG back into the vector file it came from. That information is gone the moment an image is rasterized, and no tool recovers it. What tracing does is different and worth understanding before you start: it looks at the pixels, groups them into flat regions of similar colour, and draws an outline around each region. On a logo that is close to perfect, because a logo really is a handful of flat shapes. On a photograph it is a disaster, and this page shows you exactly how much of one. Every figure below was measured through this tool. Tracing runs entirely in your browser - the image is never uploaded - and because it is the slowest thing we do, it reports real progress and you can stop it at any point.
How to use this tool
Drop in your PNG
Drag a file onto the box above or click to browse, up to 20 MB. The file is checked by its contents rather than its extension. Anything longer than 4000 pixels on a side is scaled down first, because tracing cost grows faster than the pixel count.
Set the colour count
This is the control that matters. Two colours gives a clean bitonal trace, ideal for a black logo. Six to eight suits flat illustrations. Every extra colour adds paths and bytes, so start low and raise it only until the preview stops improving.
Adjust smoothing and the minimum area
Smoothing controls how far a curve may drift from the pixels to stay simple - higher is smoother and smaller, too high rounds off corners. The minimum area drops regions below a pixel count, which clears speckle from scans and compressed sources.
Compare before and after
The two panels show the original and the trace side by side, with the output size and the path count underneath. Path count is the honest complexity measure: a good logo trace is a handful, and a number in the hundreds means the tracer is chasing detail it cannot represent well.
Copy or download the SVG
Copy the source straight to your clipboard for pasting inline, or download it as a file. Tracing takes seconds on a large image, and the Cancel button genuinely stops the work rather than just hiding it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will tracing give me back my original vector file?
No, and no tool can. Rasterizing throws away the shapes and keeps only a grid of colours, so tracing has to guess new outlines from those pixels. The result approximates the picture - often very closely for flat artwork - but it is a new drawing, not the one you started with.
How well does it work on a logo?
Very well, and it usually gets smaller too. A 400 × 400 black logo we measured went from a 7.7 KB PNG to a 1.9 KB SVG made of just four paths - sharper at any zoom and less than a third of the size. Two colours is the right setting for that kind of artwork.
What happens if I trace a photograph?
You get something large and worse-looking than what you started with. A 14.1 KB photo we traced came out as a 151.5 KB SVG with 607 paths - over ten times larger and visibly blotchy. The tool detects this from the input's colour variety and warns you before you commit.
Why is my traced SVG bigger than the PNG?
Because the two formats pay for different things. A PNG compresses repeated pixels very cheaply; an SVG has to spell out coordinates for every outline. Our flat six-colour test went from a 6.3 KB PNG to a 16.2 KB SVG - bigger, but now resolution-independent, which is usually why you wanted it.
How many colours should I choose?
Fewer than you expect. On the same flat illustration, two colours gave 622 bytes and 2 paths, eight gave 16.2 KB and 120 paths, and sixteen gave 24.2 KB and 185 paths. The visual difference between eight and sixteen was slight; the file was half as big again.
When is tracing the right tool?
Logos, line art, stamps and signatures, screen-printing and embroidery artwork, and anything headed for a laser or vinyl cutter - those machines need paths, not pixels. The common thread is flat colour with clean edges and no gradients or soft shadows.
When should I not bother?
Photographs, anything with gradients, drop shadows or soft focus, and screenshots of text. Those all rely on smooth transitions that flat regions cannot represent, so you get banding and a file several times larger. Compress the original instead.
Does the transparency survive?
Partly. Fully transparent areas are traced as empty rather than as a colour, so a logo on a transparent background stays clean. Semi-transparent pixels are folded into the nearest flat colour, because a traced region has one fill - soft edges and feathered shadows do not come through.
Is my image uploaded to trace it?
No. The whole trace runs in a Web Worker inside your browser, which is also why the interface stays responsive while it works. Your image is never sent to a server, never stored, and never seen by us - and cancelling actually terminates the work rather than abandoning a job on someone else's machine.
Why is there a 4000 pixel limit?
Because past it nobody benefits. Tracing cost grows faster than the pixel count, and the extra detail mostly adds paths rather than fidelity - a larger input produces a bigger, slower SVG that looks much the same. Anything longer on a side is scaled down first, and the panel tells you when that happened.
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