Upload the image
Drop a PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, GIF or TIFF. Start from the largest, cleanest copy you have — the tracer follows whatever is in the file, compression artefacts included.
How to vectorize an image
Decide how much detail survives
Logo flattens artwork to its simplest shapes, Illustration is the middle ground, Photo keeps more colour. Lower the colour count for fewer, cleaner shapes.
Download the vector
You get an SVG of editable paths. Re-run it with different settings as often as you like; the original is re-traced from scratch each time.
What vectorizing actually does
Vectorizing does not sharpen or enlarge an image — it redraws it. The tracer groups pixels into areas of similar colour, finds the boundary around each area, and writes that boundary out as a mathematical path. What comes back is a stack of flat shapes that happen to look like your artwork. Because those shapes are stored as coordinates rather than as a grid of dots, they redraw cleanly at any size, and each one can be selected, recoloured or deleted on its own.
Vectorizing is not upscaling
If a logo goes soft when you enlarge it, vectorizing is usually the right fix — but it works by replacing the blur with hard-edged shapes, not by recovering detail the file never held. Anything crisp to begin with, such as a wordmark, an icon or a line drawing, comes back close to identical and stays sharp at any size. Fine texture, soft shadows and smooth gradients have no clean edge to follow, so they are approximated as bands of flat colour.
Which images vectorize well
Flat artwork built from distinct areas of colour: logos, icons, badges, line art, stencils, screen-printed designs and simple illustrations. Photographs can be traced, and the Photo preset keeps more colour, but the result is a poster-like interpretation rather than a copy. Screenshots of small text vectorize badly for the same reason: the tracer follows every anti-aliased pixel around a letterform and returns a wobbly outline instead of a clean one.
Getting a cleaner trace
Lower the colour count until shapes stop splitting into near-identical neighbours — four to eight colours is plenty for most logos, and every colour you remove is one less layer to tidy up afterwards. Keep detail moderate, because a very high setting traces every wobble in a soft edge. A transparent background is never traced at all, so a PNG with alpha gives you shapes and nothing behind them, while a white background becomes a white rectangle — which the Layers panel under the preview detects and removes for you.
What you can do with the result
The download is a plain SVG: one path per traced colour region, with no scripts, embedded fonts or links to other files. It opens in Figma, Illustrator, Inkscape and Affinity Designer with every shape selectable, drops straight into a web page, prints at any size without a DPI setting to get wrong, and is the format cutting machines such as Cricut and Silhouette expect.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean to vectorize an image?
It means converting a grid of pixels into shapes described by coordinates. A vectorizer traces the boundaries between areas of colour and writes each boundary out as a path, so the artwork can be drawn at any size instead of being stuck at the resolution it was saved at.
Is vectorizing the same as upscaling?
No. Upscaling invents extra pixels and keeps the picture a raster. Vectorizing throws the pixels away and replaces them with flat shapes, which is why the result stays sharp at any size — and also why texture and gradients do not survive it intact.
Can I vectorize a photo?
You can, with the Photo preset and a higher colour count, but be clear about what you get: a stylised, poster-like version made of flat colour areas. It can look striking as an effect. It is not a faithful, scalable copy of the photograph.
Which files can I vectorize?
PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF, GIF and TIFF, up to 20 MB and 12,000 × 12,000 pixels. Anything that is not already a PNG is decoded to one before tracing, so the format you upload makes no difference to the result.
Will the vector match my image exactly?
Logos, icons and line art come back close to identical. Everything with a soft or noisy edge is an approximation, because a path has to land somewhere definite and the original does not. Convert, look at the preview, change a setting and convert again — re-tracing is free.
Can I edit the paths afterwards?
Yes. Each traced colour region is its own path, so you can select a single shape, change its fill, move it or delete it in any vector editor. Nothing is grouped, flattened or locked.
Why does my traced artwork look jagged?
Almost always the detail setting is too high for a soft-edged source. Anti-aliased edges are a gradient of in-between pixels, and at high detail the tracer follows every one of them. Lower detail and lower the colour count, and the outlines smooth out.
How do I end up with fewer shapes?
Reduce the colour count first — the number of shapes follows directly from the number of colour regions — then lower detail. The Logo preset does both at once and is the fastest way to a design with a handful of clean layers.
Does it keep a transparent background?
Yes. Transparent pixels are not traced, so artwork on a transparent PNG comes back as shapes on nothing rather than shapes on a white box.
Is it free, and what happens to my file?
Free, with no account, subscription or watermark, and no cap on how many images you vectorize. Uploads and results are stored under random IDs and expire an hour after upload.
Every PixelTools converter
Image
- Image → SVGAny raster format to vectors
- PNG → SVGTrace PNG into editable paths
- JPG → SVGTrace JPG into editable paths
- WebP → SVGTrace WebP into editable paths
- AVIF → SVGTrace AVIF into editable paths
- GIF → SVGTrace GIF into editable paths
- TIFF → SVGTrace TIFF into editable paths
- SVG → PNGRender vectors at any pixel size