Rasterlessvector

Vector paths for vinyl, sized in millimetres and built to weed

Cutting is the quick half of a vinyl job. The machine parts a thin coloured film with a swivelling knife, leaves the paper liner untouched, and rolls the sheet out looking almost unchanged. What makes it a decal is the bench work after: weeding, an hour with a hook, lifting away everything that is not the design.

So the colour count here is an estimate of your own labour, not a quality dial. Each colour in the vector becomes a separate piece of film — its own sheet on the machine, its own pass under the knife, its own weeding, its own chance of landing a millimetre out of square. A five-colour trace is not a finer decal than a two-colour one; it is five sheets, five weeds and four alignments.

What you download is SVG path data and nothing else — the geometry a cutting program turns into knife movement. Type the finished width and height in millimetres before converting and the SVG carries them, so the piece leaves the plotter at the size it has to be on the window or the door.

Drop an image here

or click to choose one

PNG · JPG · WEBP

How it works

  1. Upload the artwork — PNG, JPEG or WEBP, one image per conversion. A hard-edged mark on a plain background weeds far better than a photograph.
  2. Start at 2 colours: one closed contour per island, one sheet of film, nothing to line up.
  3. Raise the count only when you accept another sheet to cut, weed, tape and place — 3 to 5 for a genuine spot-colour logo, rarely more.
  4. Leave Shape stacking on Cut-outs, then type the finished width and height in millimetres so the file opens at true size.
  5. Check the preview, sign in with Google (free) to download the SVG, and open it in your plotter's software with a knife assigned to each colour group.
A single-colour silhouette shown as the uploaded picture and as the traced vector beside it — one closed contour, the shape a plotter would cut from a single sheet of film. — source image A single-colour silhouette shown as the uploaded picture and as the traced vector beside it — one closed contour, the shape a plotter would cut from a single sheet of film. — vector result
A single-colour silhouette shown as the uploaded picture and as the traced vector beside it — one closed contour, the shape a plotter would cut from a single sheet of film.

Who this is for

The people who need this run plotters, not design studios: a sign shop cutting window graphics, a wrapper laying a trading name along a van door, somebody pressing heat-transfer vinyl onto workwear. The artwork arrives as a picture — a logo emailed as a screenshot, a badge saved off a phone — and must become geometry before a blade moves.

What makes a job easy or awful is physical. Film has thickness and the knife has a radius, so detail under about a millimetre survives the trace and tears at the bench. Counters and islands are each a scrap lifted by hand — the middle of an O, a halftone pattern traced into thousands of specks. Heat-transfer vinyl is cut mirrored and weeded on a carrier before it meets fabric.

Layered work needs an order and a reference. Cut every colour from one file at one size so the pieces share an origin, then build from the bottom up, background colour squeegeed down first. The transfer tape holds the registration: hinge it along one edge over the layer already down, peel the liner back and roll from the hinge.

Settings we suggest

Colours: 2. One boundary between mark and background, one closed contour per island, one sheet of film, nothing to align — the cleanest single-colour decal you can hand a plotter. Go to 3 to 5 only when the design really is that many flats. High counts also turn the soft ramp of pixels along each edge into a thin region of its own, and a hair of film cut outside the real edge cannot be weeded.

Shape stacking: Cut-outs. Each colour region is a closed shape with whatever sits above it subtracted, so no two pieces of film overlap. Stacked does the opposite: a full background slab under the lettering, so you cut and weed a sheet of red that then vanishes under the white — wasted material, a double thickness, an edge for a jet wash to lift. Holes stay holes too: the middle of an O is an inner boundary you weed out.

Draw style: Fill shapes, so each colour is a filled closed region whose outline is the cut. It also writes a 0.7 px seam stroke along those boundaries; software that cuts every path will then lap each contour twice, so delete that group or choose Stroke shapes.

Group by colour puts each colour in its own SVG group — one group per sheet of film. Size: enter the finished width and height in millimetres, 1 to 5000. That field is applied to the SVG, so you cut at true size; left blank, the file carries traced pixel dimensions read at 96 pixels = 25.4 mm, and anything above 1.5 megapixels is downscaled before tracing.

Questions

How many colours should I trace a vinyl job at?

Two, unless the extra hours are being paid for. Two colours give one closed contour per island — a single-colour decal in one sheet of film, nothing to layer or register. Three to five suits a flat spot-colour logo; a photograph at twenty-odd colours traces handsomely and cannot be weeded at all.

How do I get the decal out at the exact size it has to be?

Enter the finished width and height in millimetres, 1 to 5000, before converting. Those dimensions are written into the SVG, so it opens at true size in your cutting software. Left empty, the file carries traced pixel dimensions read at 96 pixels = 25.4 mm.

Will my plotter software read the SVG properly?

It is plain SVG 1.1 holding path elements and nothing else: no embedded bitmap, no scripts, no fonts. Every traced colour is a closed region, so the knife follows a real boundary. If your machine prefers DXF, tick that format in the same conversion for outline geometry.

In what order do I apply a two-colour decal, and how do I line it up?

Bottom up. Squeegee the lower colour down first, then tape the second colour over it while it is still on its liner, hinge the tape along one edge, peel the liner away and roll down. Heat-transfer vinyl works the same way, cut mirrored.

Is it free, and what are the limits?

Free and watermark-free. Anyone can convert and see the preview; a free Google sign-in releases the SVG download. One image at a time, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels, 10 conversions per hour signed out and 60 per hour, 300 per day signed in. Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; a run still going at 60 seconds stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image. Download links expire after 1 hour, and uploaded and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule.

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