Turn a bitmap into real vector paths
"Bitmap" is one word doing three jobs, and which one you have in mind changes what you should do next. In Inkscape and GIMP it simply means an image made of pixels — that is the sense behind Path > Trace Bitmap, which is where a lot of people first meet the idea of turning a picture into paths. In older graphics work, and in typeface work, it means one bit per pixel: black where the bit is set, white where it is not. On Windows it is also a file extension, the uncompressed pixel format that still falls out of scanner utilities, CAD viewers and screen-capture tools.
Clear up that last meaning first, because it is the only one that can stop you at the door. A file whose name ends in .bmp is not accepted here, and TIFF is not accepted either. Both were dropped from the uploader on purpose, to keep the number of image decoders the server has to trust as small as possible. Fixing it costs one step: open the file in Paint, Preview, GIMP or whatever viewer you already have, and re-save it as PNG. PNG stores the identical pixel grid losslessly, so the round trip throws nothing away — the file just arrives smaller. What the uploader takes is PNG, JPEG and WEBP.
For the other two meanings the work on this side is identical: read the pixel grid, decide where the real colour boundaries sit, and write those boundaries out as curves. SVG, PDF, EPS and DXF all come from that same traced geometry.
Drop an image here
or click to choose one
How it works
- Check the file is a PNG, JPEG or WEBP — if it ends in .bmp, re-save it as PNG first.
- Drop it on the converter and set a colour count: 12 to start, or 2 for a single-colour silhouette.
- Choose your outputs — SVG for editing, PDF or EPS for print, DXF for cutting; pick several and you also get a ZIP.
- Convert and look at the preview. If edges look chunky or detail is missing, change the colour count and run it again.
- Sign in with Google to download the vector files; they are free and carry no watermark.
Who this is for
A pixel grid has one size baked into it: enlarge it and the edges go soft or the squares start showing. A path carries no such ceiling, because the renderer draws the curve fresh at whatever scale you ask for. That is the whole argument for tracing, and it is why an old icon, a scanned stamp or a one-bit logo that never existed above screen size can still end up on a shirt, a sign or a cutting mat.
There is a fair suspicion attached to tools like this, and it deserves a direct answer: did it really redraw the artwork, or did it park the original pixels inside a vector container and call it done? You can settle that in a text editor. The SVG here holds path elements and nothing else — no image element, no base64 blob, no PNG smuggled inside. Every edge is a curve fitted to a colour boundary the tracer measured in your pixels, which is why the file stays small and why recolouring a shape in an editor actually recolours it.
That matters most to people who already had the word "bitmap" in their vocabulary before they searched for it. If you have been running Trace Bitmap locally and want the result to drop into a drawing you are already editing, ask for SVG grouped by colour: each colour arrives in its own group, so selecting every blue shape is one click rather than a rubber-band and a lot of shift-clicking.
What it will not do is invent detail that was never in the grid. It does not read lettering as text, it does not remove a background beyond what the alpha channel already marks transparent, and it takes one image per conversion.
Settings we suggest
The preset on this page is 12 colours, Cut-outs and filled shapes, which suits the flat artwork that "bitmap" usually turns out to mean. Colour count is the control that moves the result most, and it runs from 2 to 64. Two is the setting for a genuine one-bit bitmap, or for anything you want as one clean silhouette. A dozen or so holds a flat logo or icon together. Go high only for shaded sources, and expect bands rather than a smooth gradient — the sample on this page is a badge with soft tones, and each tone becomes its own region.
Shape stacking decides how those regions relate. Cut-outs removes the area covered by the shapes above it, so every region is a separate closed contour and nothing overlaps; that is what keeps a cutting path sane. Stacked leaves the lower shapes whole and lets the upper ones sit on them.
Draw style is fill_shapes here, so each colour area becomes a filled path; the two stroke styles draw the artwork as lines instead. Group by colour changes how the SVG is grouped, not the geometry.
Choose formats before converting — picking more than one adds a ZIP with everything in it. DXF is R2010 (AC1024) and carries outlines only: LWPOLYLINE and SPLINE entities, one layer per colour, with millimetres declared in the header so the machine opens the part at size instead of guessing the unit. The PNG output is not a vector; it is the traced result rendered back to pixels on a transparent background, which is handy as a cleaned-up copy. For a physical width and height there is a millimetre field, and it reaches all four vector formats — the SVG and DXF geometry, and the page box of the PDF and EPS — so a size you ask for here is the size the next tool sees.
Questions
What do I do with a file that ends in .bmp?
Re-save it as PNG and upload that instead — we no longer accept BMP, so the original would be turned away before tracing starts. Nothing is lost in the re-save: both formats hold the same pixel values, and PNG just compresses them.
Does the SVG still contain the original pixels somewhere?
No. Open it in a text editor and you will find path elements and nothing else: no image element, no embedded picture data. The shapes were fitted to colour boundaries measured in your bitmap, and the bitmap itself is not carried along.
Is there a learned model doing the tracing?
No. The tracer is geometric: it segments the image into colour regions, uses an explicit anti-aliasing model to work out where an edge really sits between two pixels, then fits curves to the result. Your image is not used for anything else either.
How large can the bitmap be, and how long does it take?
Up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels. Images above 1.5 megapixels are downscaled before tracing, so the output's pixel dimensions are the downscaled ones — use the millimetre field when you need an exact physical size. Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; fine-line or noisy artwork takes longer, and a conversion that has not finished within 60 seconds stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image.
Do I need to sign in to get the files?
Converting and previewing are open to everyone; downloading the SVG, PDF, EPS or DXF needs a free Google sign-in. It is free and watermark-free either way. Anyone can run 10 conversions an hour; signing in raises that to 60 an hour and 300 a day.
How long do you keep what I upload?
Download links expire after 1 hour. The uploaded image and the generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule and are never used for anything else. The server's working copy is thrown away as soon as the request ends, whether it succeeded or failed.