PNG to SVG, traced where the file already is.

A PNG stores a grid of pixels. An SVG stores shapes. Nothing can turn one into the other without deciding where one colour ends and the next begins, so every PNG-to-SVG converter is really a colour-quantising step followed by a contour-tracing step.

Here the order is: the image is drawn to a canvas at no more than 1,400 px on the long side, the palette is reduced to your chosen colour count, and each flat region is traced into a closed path. Regions smaller than the preset floor are dropped instead of becoming specks you would weed out by hand.

·1 colour → 2 fills (ink and paper): logos, stamps, single-colour decals

·3 colours → flat illustrations, most clipart

·6 colours → simple badges and characters

·16 colours → gradients approximated; expect hundreds of paths

Transparent pixels are composited onto white before tracing, because a transparent area has no colour to trace. If your PNG is a logo on transparency, the result is the logo on a white background — the vector outlines are correct, but the background is now part of the picture.

For a cut file this is usually what you want anyway: a cutter follows the outline, not the background. If the white sits inside the artwork as a hole, delete that path in your editor — it is the one path that starts at the top-left corner and covers the whole canvas.

Tracing fails when the image does not have regions, only variation. Three cases cover most of it:

·Photographs. Skin, sky and fabric contain thousands of near-identical colours. At 16 colours they become banded blobs; at 3 colours they collapse into mush.

·Anti-aliased text. Every glyph edge is a gradient of the background colour, so the tracer draws a halo around each letter. Cut text should be outlined in a vector editor, not traced.

·Hairline drawings. A 1 px line has no interior to fill. At 3 colours the tracer keeps only the thick parts and the drawing disappears; at 16 colours it returns as 1,300 fragments.

The preview reports the path count for exactly this reason. Under 200 paths is comfortable on a Cricut. Over 800 is a warning, not a challenge.

Five minutes of preparation replaces an hour of cleanup:

·Crop to the artwork. Empty margin becomes a big white rectangle you have to delete later.

·Raise contrast. If the PNG is a photo of a printout, the paper texture will trace as noise.

·Start at 1 colour. If the single-colour result reads well, the shape is clean; only then add colours.

·Keep the long side between 800 and 1,400 px. Larger is downscaled anyway, smaller loses edge quality.

·Delete stray pixels at the edges in any paint app before uploading — the tracer cannot tell a dust speck from a detail.

An SVG that looks right on screen can still be unusable on the mat. Two numbers matter more than the preview: the thinnest stroke in millimetres and the number of separate islands.

For 651 vinyl on a home cutter, keep strokes at or above 1.4 mm; HTV needs closer to 2 mm. For islands, count how many pieces you would have to place by hand — every one is a chance to misalign.

This tracer does not widen thin strokes for you. It reports the path count and lets you drop to fewer colours, which is usually what removes both problems at once.

Tracing copies the geometry that is already in the image. Generating draws new geometry from a description. If you have a finished logo, trace it: it is free and exact. If you have a rough idea or a photo of a real object, generation usually produces cleaner lines than any trace will.

The AI path costs 100 credits (US$0.99 at the Starter rate) per run and returns flat vector shapes from the vector engine; the trace path on this page costs nothing and has no run limit.