ByteScope

Image to SVG

Trace a logo, illustration or drawing into clean SVG paths — choose a preset, tune the colours, fix the palette, and download. Nothing leaves your browser.

Your files never leave your browser — all processing is local.

Drop a logo, illustration or drawing here

or click to browse, or paste — PNG, JPEG or WebP

  • Tracing suits clear blocks of colour: logos, illustrations, line art. A photo comes out poster-like, and the file gets big.
  • Gradients turn into steps of flat colour, and text becomes outlines, not editable text.
  • Speed: a flat-colour image of about 2 million pixels takes around 7 seconds; a photo or a noisy scan takes far longer.
  • A traced logo is still the same logo: check the trademark before commercial use.

Upscale firstRemove the background first

About this tool

Auto-tracing turns a grid of pixels into filled shapes: it groups pixels of similar colour, follows the outline of each group, and writes the outline as a curve. That is how an image becomes a vector, and it works well when the image is made of clear blocks of colour — a logo, a flat illustration, a line drawing, a scanned stamp — and badly when it is not. This page is a free vectorizer with no upload step: it runs the open-source VTracer engine (MIT or Apache-2.0) as WebAssembly inside your tab, so the picture is never sent anywhere. Pick one of four presets — logo, illustration, black-and-white line art or pixel art — and the SVG appears next to the original, with a slider you drag to compare the two.

Tune it, then fix the colours

Under Advanced you can set the number of colours (or leave it on auto), how large a speck has to be before it is removed, the corner threshold, and whether outlines are curves or straight-edged polygons. Small images re-trace on their own 300 ms after you change a setting; above one million pixels the page waits for you to press Convert again, because a big image takes several seconds and you may want to change two things at once. A cancel button is always there while it works. When the result is close, the colour list lets you click a swatch to change that colour or delete it: a deleted colour's shapes join the closest remaining colour, which is how most logo clean-ups go. Those palette edits belong to this page only — converting again starts from a fresh trace and clears them.

What it is good at, and what it is not

Tracing suits clear blocks of colour. A photograph comes out poster-like and the file becomes large, because every subtle shade needs its own shape. Gradients turn into steps of flat colour, and text becomes outlines rather than editable text; small lettering can turn into a blur. Speed follows the same line: a flat-colour image of about 2 million pixels takes around 7 seconds on a desktop, while a photo or a noisy scan can take many times longer. The page shows the path count, node count and file size of the result, and suggests fewer colours when the file passes 2 MB or 20,000 nodes. It does not claim to match the paid tracing services on every image — for an important logo, compare the output with your original at 4× before you use it.

Nothing is uploaded

The image is decoded by your browser, traced in a Web Worker, and the SVG you download is built from the same text you see in the preview. The converter itself, about 0.3 MB, is fetched once and cached; after that the work happens with the network idle. A traced logo is still the same logo, so check the trademark before using it commercially. If the background is in the way, you can remove it first; the AI image upscaler can enlarge a picture before tracing; and to turn the finished SVG back into a PNG at any size, use the SVG to PNG converter.

Frequently asked questions

Which images convert well?

Images made of clear blocks of colour: logos, flat illustrations, icons, line drawings, stamps and pixel art. The sharper the edges and the fewer the shades, the cleaner the result — and the better it cuts on a Cricut or a laser. Photographs and soft gradients convert, but they come out poster-like and produce large files.

Why does my photo look like a poster?

An SVG is built from filled shapes, and a photo has thousands of slightly different shades. To keep the file manageable the tracer groups similar shades into one flat colour, so smooth transitions become steps. Lowering the colour count makes the poster effect stronger and the file smaller; raising it does the opposite, at the cost of many more paths.

Is my image uploaded?

No. The image is read by your browser, traced by a WebAssembly module running in a Web Worker in your tab, and the SVG is built there too. The only network request the tool makes is for the converter file, about 0.3 MB, which is cached after the first visit.

Does it keep a transparent background?

Yes. Pixels that are mostly transparent are left out of the SVG, so the shapes sit on whatever you place the file on. If a PNG has a soft, semi-transparent edge, that edge is treated as either solid or empty — the trace does not reproduce partial transparency.

Will the text in my logo stay editable?

No. Tracing sees shapes, not letters, so text becomes outlines. Large lettering usually traces cleanly; small or thin lettering can fill in or blur. If you need editable text, set the lettering again in your design software and use the trace only for the artwork.

What do the decimals setting and the file-size warning mean?

Path coordinates are stored with up to three digits after the decimal point. Two is a good default; zero makes the file smaller and looks fine on large shapes but can round small details. The warning appears when the SVG passes 20,000 nodes or 2 MB, and the usual fix is to lower the colour count or raise the speck removal.

How long does a conversion take?

A flat-colour image of about 2 million pixels takes around 7 seconds on a desktop; a photograph or a noisy scan takes far longer. Images up to one million pixels re-run on their own when you change a setting, while bigger ones wait for you to press Convert again. You can cancel at any time.

Can I use a traced logo commercially?

Turning a logo into a vector does not change who owns it. If it is a registered trademark or someone else's artwork, you still need their permission to use it commercially.

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