PNG to SVG

How it works

1. 1Choose your image. The tool accepts PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF and BMP files, up to 5 MB per image in the free web tool.
2. 2Choose the kind of image: Logo, icon or flat illustration (the default), Black and white line art, or Photo.
3. 3If you need them, open the advanced settings and change the colours, curve style, specks, colour precision, layer difference or corner threshold.
4. 4If you are not signed in, complete the human check. Then press Convert to SVG.
5. 5Check the preview of the SVG on the checkerboard, then press Download SVG.

Example output

Original PNG, 1024 x 1024 px, 37 KB

Traced SVG, 5 paths, 16 KB

Original, enlarged 6 times

SVG, enlarged 6 times

How to convert PNG to SVG

Open the PNG to SVG tool and choose your image. Before the upload starts, the browser checks the file type, the file size and the pixel count. It then shows a preview with the image size.

Next, choose the kind of image. The default is Logo, icon or flat illustration. Choose Black and white line art for pen drawings and signatures, or Photo for pictures with many shades.

If you are not signed in, complete the human check. Then press Convert to SVG. When the job finishes, the result panel shows the SVG on a checkerboard so you can check the trace.

Press Download SVG to save the file. Keep your original PNG, because you may want to change the settings and convert it again.

What PNG to SVG conversion does (tracing)

A PNG to SVG conversion is a tracing job, not a file wrapper, so when you change PNG to SVG the tool redraws the picture as shapes. The PNG is not placed inside an SVG. The tool reads the pixels and draws the shapes they form as vector paths.

VTracer, an open-source tracing program under the MIT licence, does the work on our servers. It groups pixels of similar colour into shapes and fits curves around them. It is not artificial intelligence, and it does not understand what the picture shows.

The result is a plain SVG made of filled paths. It has no embedded raster image, no text elements, no scripts and no links. It has a width, a height and a viewBox, so it scales to any size.

• Filled paths only. No PNG is embedded in the file.
• No text elements. Letters become shapes.
• No scripts and no links.
• Width, height and viewBox are set, so the file scales.

Which PNG files work well

The tool suits logos, icons, flat illustrations, line art, signatures, silhouettes and scanned drawings. These images have a few solid colours and sharp edges, and tracing them usually gives the clearest shapes.

Photos and images with smooth gradients, shadows or fine texture become many flat colour patches, which looks posterised. With default settings a photograph can produce a very large SVG, many megabytes with thousands of paths. The Photo preset makes a much smaller file, but it loses detail.

A blurry or low-resolution source gives rough edges, so start from the largest and cleanest version you have. JPEG compression noise around edges can show up as specks. Raise remove specks to clean it.

Sharp engineering drawings that must be exactly dimensioned are not a good fit. The tool does not detect layers, objects or text.

• Good fit: logos, icons, flat art, line art and signatures.
• Poor fit: photographs, smooth gradients, shadows and fine texture.

Transparent PNG files

Transparency is kept. A transparent PNG stays transparent in the SVG, and the tool adds no background shape behind the drawing. A logo with a transparent background keeps that background.

WebP and GIF files with transparency are kept the same way. A JPG has no transparency, so a JPG background becomes a coloured shape behind the drawing.

If you want to remove a background, do it in your image editor before you convert the file. Then convert the edited image again.

Settings explained

The What kind of image is it? menu sets a group of values. Logo, icon or flat illustration is the default. It uses full colour, removes specks smaller than 4 px, sets colour precision to 6, sets colour layer difference to 16, sets the corner threshold to 60 degrees and uses smooth curves.

Black and white line art makes one black layer on a transparent background. Photo uses fewer colours for a smaller file. It removes specks up to 16 px, sets colour precision to 5 and sets colour layer difference to 32.

Open the advanced settings to change single values. Changing any value switches the menu to Custom settings. The advanced settings are these:

• Colours: full colour or black and white.
• Curve style: smooth curves or straight edges.
• Remove specks smaller than: 0 to 16 px.
• Colour precision: 1 to 8. Lower means fewer colours.
• Colour layer difference: 0 to 255. Higher means fewer layers.
• Corner threshold: 0 to 180 degrees. Higher means rounder corners.

Lower colour precision and higher layer difference give a smaller SVG with fewer shapes. They also lose detail, so compare the preview before you download.

Size and file limits

The free web tool accepts images up to 5 MB per image, and 10 images per day. Signed-in users can upload up to 10 MB per image. The pixel count of each image is capped at 16 MP (4096 x 4096).

An image with more than 4 MP (for example 2000 x 2000) pixels is scaled down before tracing. The SVG is still vector. The result panel shows the traced size and whether the image was scaled down.

If the SVG would be larger than 20 MB, the job fails with an output too large message. The tool does not return a cut-off file. To make the file smaller, raise remove specks or lower colour precision.

Signed-in users pay 5 credits per image, plus 1 credit for each 5 MB of SVG after the first 5 MB. Failed and timed-out jobs are refunded. The output has no watermark.

• Free web tool: up to 5 MB per image and 10 images per day.
• Signed-in users: up to 10 MB per image.
• Images above 4 MP (for example 2000 x 2000) pixels are scaled down before tracing.
• An SVG over 20 MB fails with an output too large message.

Editing the SVG afterwards

Because the file is made of paths, you can edit it in a vector editor. You can change the colours, move a shape or delete a stray speck.

Letters are shapes, not text. You cannot change the wording or the font of a traced word inside the SVG. Retype the words in your editor if you need editable text.

A detailed trace has many small shapes, so hand editing takes time. If the first trace does not suit you, convert the original PNG again with different settings.

PNG to SVG from code

You can run the same tracing through the render API. Send a POST request to /v1/image-jobs on the API host, with the raw image bytes as the body, not JSON and not multipart form data. Set Content-Type to image/png, image/jpeg, image/webp, image/gif or image/bmp.

Send your API key in the header Authorization: Bearer followed by the key, or as x-api-key. Put the settings in the query string. The op setting is image_to_svg, the default and only value. Other settings are colormode (color or binary), hierarchical (stacked or cutout), mode (spline or polygon), filter_speckle (0 to 16), color_precision (1 to 8), layer_difference (0 to 255), corner_threshold (0 to 180), segment_length (3.5 to 10), splice_threshold (0 to 180), path_precision (0 to 4) and timeout_sec (1 to 60). Unknown names are rejected.

The request returns 202 with a job_id, a status of queued and the credits reserved. Poll GET /v1/jobs/:id until the status is succeeded, failed or timeout. On success, download the SVG from download_url, a short-lived signed link that serves the file as an attachment, so download it soon after the job succeeds. The result also lists bytes, width, height, paths, src_width, src_height and downscaled.

Errors use 400 for an unsupported image, 413 for a file that is too large, 402 for insufficient credits and 429 when you are rate limited. The API limit is 10 MB per image, with the same pixel limit. There is no batch endpoint, so send one request for each image. Webhooks are not available yet.

Privacy: what happens to your file

The image is sent to our server. It is not processed in your browser. The uploaded image is used only to make the SVG, and it is deleted as soon as the job ends, whether the job succeeds or fails.

The SVG result is deleted after 10 minutes for the free web tool. No history is kept, so download the file before that time. Download links are short-lived.

You must have the right to use the image you upload. Tracing a logo or artwork you do not own does not give you the rights to it. The Acceptable Use Policy sets the rules that apply.

Convert PNG to SVG: related tools

If you need the opposite direction, the SVG to PNG tool turns an SVG file into a PNG image at the width you choose. The SVG to PDF tool turns an SVG file into a PDF file.

If your starting file is a JPG photo or scan, the JPG to SVG tool covers the same tracing with advice written for JPG files. The image vectorizer covers the same tracing for any image type.

Questions