PNG to SVG Converter
Trace raster PNG images into scalable SVG vectors. Colour, greyscale and black-and-white modes, adjustable detail and smoothing, a side-by-side PNG vs SVG preview, the path count of the trace, and an honest size comparison — traced SVGs are often larger than the PNG.
Upload Files
Drag and drop your PNG files here, or click to select (max 3 files)
Up to 10 MB per PNG
Selected Files
Selected files will appear here
Upload PNG files to start vectorizing
About PNG to SVG Vectorization
- • This is tracing, not a format conversion — the tracer approximates the pixels with vector shapes, so the output is a new interpretation of the image
- • Your PNG is uploaded over HTTPS to our server, vectorised there, returned, and discarded — vectorising cannot run in the browser
- • Up to 3 PNG files at once, 10 MB each; requests time out after 60 seconds
- • Mode picks colour, greyscale or a single-colour silhouette; Detail trades fidelity against size; Smoothing picks curves or polygons
- • Transparency is preserved: a transparent PNG traces to an SVG with no background, while a uniform solid background is kept as a background rectangle
- • Expect the SVG to be larger than the PNG for anything but flat graphics — check the size comparison above, then optimise
- • Photographs and dense text vectorise badly; if the result reports only a couple of paths, the image is not suitable for vectorising
- • Use individual download buttons or download all files as a ZIP
About PNG to SVG Converter
This converter traces a raster PNG into SVG vector paths using VTracer, a colour-clustering tracer. The image is normalised to roughly 1500px on its longest side (small art is upscaled so the tracer can fit smooth curves), grouped into colour regions, and each region is emitted as an SVG path. You choose colour, greyscale or black-and-white output, how much detail to keep, and whether paths are fitted as curves or polygons. The result is shown next to the original at up to 4x zoom, with the number of traced paths and the real output size, so you can judge the trace before downloading it.
Why use a PNG to SVG Converter?
Tracing is the only way to recover a scalable asset from a logo that exists solely as a raster — a common situation when the original vector file is lost. A good trace gives you a file that stays crisp at any size and can be edited in Illustrator or Inkscape. It is equally important to see when tracing fails: this tool reports the path count and flags a degenerate result, so a photo that collapsed into a single rectangle is called out instead of being handed over as a successful conversion.
Who is it for?
Designers rebuilding a logo from a PNG export, web developers who need a resolution-independent icon, print operators who require vector artwork for cutting or engraving, and anyone evaluating whether a particular image can be vectorised at all before paying for manual redrawing.
How to use the tool
Drag up to three PNG files onto the drop zone, or click to browse — each file must be a real PNG under 10 MB (both are checked before upload)
Choose a Mode: Colour traces every colour region, Greyscale desaturates first, Black & White produces a single-colour silhouette
Pick a Detail level — it sets speckle filtering, colour precision and layer difference together; High keeps the most detail and takes the longest
Optionally override colour fidelity with the bits-per-channel slider, and choose Smooth (curved splines) or Sharp (polygons)
Click Vectorize — the elapsed time is shown while the file is on the server, and you can cancel at any point
Compare the result: the traced SVG sits next to the source PNG, with a side-by-side / single-image toggle and 1x, 2x, 4x zoom
Check the path count and the size comparison — a handful of paths means the trace failed, and a much larger SVG is normal for detailed images
Download the .svg (or all files as a ZIP), and run it through the SVG Optimizer if the file is bigger than you want
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convert a PNG to SVG online?
Drop your .png file in, pick a mode and detail level, and press Vectorize. The file is traced server-side and comes back as an .svg you can preview next to the original before downloading. Understand what happens in between: this is raster-to-vector tracing, not a format conversion. The tracer clusters the pixels into colour regions and draws a path around each one, so the output approximates the input. Simple logos, icons and flat line art trace cleanly; photographs and soft gradients do not. The path count shown with the result tells you immediately which of the two you got.
What is the difference between tracing and converting?
A conversion (PNG to WebP, say) re-encodes the same grid of pixels in another container — the picture is preserved exactly or with controlled loss. Tracing throws the pixel grid away and rebuilds the picture out of geometry: edges are detected, similar colours are grouped, and each region becomes a filled path. Nothing guarantees the result resembles the original, which is why two different tracers give two different SVGs from one PNG. That is also why the output scales infinitely: there are no pixels left, only coordinates. Treat a trace as a new interpretation of the artwork, and always inspect it.
Are my images uploaded to a server?
Yes — the PNG is uploaded over HTTPS to our server, vectorised, returned, and discarded. Tracing is CPU-heavy native work that cannot run in the browser, so unlike our client-side tools this one requires a round trip. We do not store, log or share the images, and nothing is retained after the response is sent. If the artwork is confidential, run the same class of tool locally instead: potrace for monochrome bitmaps, or VTracer (the engine used here) as a command-line binary for full-colour tracing — both are open source and work entirely offline.
When should I vectorise a PNG instead of keeping the raster?
Vectorise when the artwork is geometric and you need it at unknown sizes: a logo for signage, an icon for a design system, artwork for cutting, engraving or embroidery. Keep the raster whenever the image is photographic or detailed — for those, a modern codec beats tracing on both size and fidelity, so use [PNG to WebP](/tools/png-to-webp/) or [PNG to AVIF](/tools/png-to-avif/) instead. A useful test: if you can describe the image as a small number of flat shapes, it will trace well. If describing it requires the word gradient, texture or photo, it will not.
Why did my photo come back as a single shape?
Because the tracer found no boundaries it considered significant and collapsed the image into one filled region. That output is a technically valid SVG — it opens, it scales — but it carries no information, which is exactly the failure mode this tool now reports. The result panel shows how many paths were traced, and warns explicitly when the count is under three. Fixes, in order: raise Detail to High, switch Mode to Black & White if the source is line art, or increase the colour fidelity slider. If the count stays low, the image genuinely has no vector structure to find.
Why is the SVG bigger than the PNG it came from?
Because a traced SVG stores every shape as coordinate text. A detailed image can trace into thousands of paths, each holding dozens of numbers, and that XML routinely outweighs a compressed raster — a 160 KB logo PNG traced at medium detail came back as a 477 KB SVG in our own testing. The size comparison in the result panel shows the real numbers for your file. To shrink it: lower Detail (fewer, larger regions), reduce colour fidelity, or run the output through the [SVG Optimizer](/tools/svg-optimizer/), which trims path precision and redundant attributes.
Is transparency preserved when tracing a PNG?
Yes. The alpha channel is kept through the pipeline, so a PNG with a transparent background traces into an SVG whose canvas stays transparent — drop it onto any page background and nothing shows behind the artwork. When the four corners of the source are opaque and agree on one colour, that colour is treated as a deliberate solid background and re-added as a full-canvas rectangle, so the SVG looks like the PNG rather than losing its backdrop. Partial transparency and soft anti-aliased edges are the exception: those become hard region boundaries, since a path is either filled or it is not.
What are the limits, and what do the controls actually change?
Three files per run, 10 MB per PNG, and a 60-second timeout per file — high detail on a large photo has been measured around 15 seconds. Detail sets three tracer parameters together: speckle filtering (dropping tiny specks), colour precision (significant bits per RGB channel: 5 on Low, 6 on Medium, 8 on High), and the colour difference between layers. Smoothing chooses spline fitting or polygon fitting. Mode selects colour clustering, a greyscale pass before clustering, or binary black-and-white. For JPEG sources use [JPG to SVG](/tools/jpg-to-svg/), which runs the same engine.
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