Convert raster images into real vector geometry
"Raster to vector" is a resampling problem in a drawing problem's clothes: the input is a lattice of colour samples, the output has to be closed regions bounded by curves. This converter is a geometric tracer — no learned model, no weights, same input, same geometry — working in four explicit stages. Colour segmentation comes first, quantising in LAB space and regularising the label field, so the stage emits a map of flat regions rather than a per-pixel palette. An anti-aliasing model follows: between two flat colours a rendered edge is a two- or three-pixel ramp, not a step, and the boundary belongs where that ramp is half of each side. Each border is sampled along its own normal and slid onto that crossing, landing at sub-pixel position.
The third stage decides whether the result behaves inside a CAD, GIS, signage or prepress tool. A planar subdivision is built on the lattice of cracks between pixels, so each border between two regions is traced once and both regions are assembled from that chain, one of them reversed. Contouring each colour on its own — what per-region contour routines do — fits every shared border twice, and the two answers disagree by up to a pixel: that is the double edge a cutter runs twice and the hairline that shows on plate. Here there is no second copy to drift, and a region's polygon area equals its pixel count by construction.
Curve fitting runs last, on chains already in the right place: simplified, corners kept as corners, the rest fitted with least-squares cubic Béziers and falling back to a line or a circular arc where one covers the run within tolerance. Every subpath closes, and the DXF and PDF writers promote every curve to a cubic, so the SVG curve and the curve AutoCAD opens are the same.
Drop an image here
or click to choose one
How it works
- Upload one raster image — PNG, JPEG or WEBP, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels, one image per conversion.
- Set the colour count between 2 and 64. It decides how many flat regions the segmentation produces, and every later stage inherits that map.
- Choose a draw style and shape stacking: filled closed shapes with cut-outs for cutting and printing, or stroked edges for the border network on its own.
- Select the output formats — SVG, PDF, EPS, DXF, PNG — and a size in millimetres if the geometry has to land at a physical scale.
- Check the 800 px preview, then sign in with Google (free) to download. Pick more than one format and a ZIP is produced as well.
Who this is for
This page assumes you own the vocabulary already: a draughtsman who needs a scanned detail as polylines and splines to snap to, a GIS technician lifting region boundaries off a raster plan sheet, a sign shop turning artwork into cut paths, a prepress operator separating flat artwork by colour.
What those jobs share is geometry that has to survive a second program: an outline only nearly closed will not offset, will not fill and will not cut, and two contours that nearly coincide give a router a double pass and a press a visible ridge. Both come from borders fitted twice.
The output stays honest about what it is. The SVG is paths only, with no embedded bitmap. The PDF is PDF-1.4 with genuine cubic curve operators. The DXF holds outlines, one layer per colour, no filled areas. The PNG output is the vectors re-rendered on transparency — a cleaned raster, not vector data.
Settings we suggest
Colour count is the real control, since every later stage inherits the region map it produces. Two colours give one silhouette with a single clean contour, the stencil and cut-file case; four to eight covers most signage and flat logo artwork; scanned line work sits around six to twelve; tonal artwork needs twenty-four or more.
Draw style: filled shapes gives each region as a filled closed path, which is what a press or a cutter expects; stroked shapes draws those same closed paths as outlines; stroked edges draws only the shared border network, each border exactly once, for a single-line drawing rather than areas. Shape stacking: cut-outs keeps holes as reverse-wound subpaths so the nonzero fill rule punches them out, which is what you want when a hole is a real hole in a cut; stacked drops the holes and lets paint order cover them, easier when shapes get pulled apart in an editor.
Group by colour puts each colour's regions into one SVG group — spot separations, or a colour grabbed as a single cut layer; the DXF gets a layer per colour regardless. The millimetre size field applies to every vector output: the SVG width and height, the DXF coordinates, and the PDF and EPS page box, which is set to that physical size rather than to the pixel count. Above 1.5 megapixels the image is downscaled before tracing, so the output's pixel dimensions are the downscaled ones.
Questions
Will neighbouring shapes have duplicated borders?
No — each border is traced once and both regions reuse that chain, one reversed, so no second copy exists to drift: no overlapping slivers, no white hairlines. Filled SVG does add a 0.7 px seam stroke in each pair's mean colour, because some renderers anti-alias abutting fills; that covers a rendering artefact, not a gap in the geometry.
Are all paths closed, and how are holes handled?
Every subpath closes — a region's rings leave the subdivision as complete cycles. Holes follow shape stacking: cut-outs keeps them as reverse-wound subpaths for the nonzero rule to punch out, stacked drops them and lets whatever sits inside paint over the top.
What exactly does the DXF contain?
DXF R2010 (AC1024), so it opens in AutoCAD 2010 and later, Fusion 360, LightBurn, Inkscape and FreeCAD. LWPOLYLINE for straight runs, degree-3 SPLINE for curves from the fitted Bézier control points with clamped knots — control points, not fit points, so the curve matches the SVG. One layer per colour, named FILL_RRGGBB. Coordinates are at millimetre scale, where 96 pixels correspond to 25.4 mm unless you ask for a physical size, and the header declares that unit ($INSUNITS = 4), so an importer that reads it places the part at size without being told which unit to assume.
Does the tracer use a learned model?
No — colour quantisation and label regularisation, an explicit anti-aliasing model, a planar arrangement, least-squares curve fitting. Nothing is inferred from a corpus, so the failure modes are geometric ones you can reason about: too few colours, or an input with no flat regions.
How long does a conversion take, and what are the limits?
Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; fine-line or noisy images take longer. If a conversion does not finish within 60 seconds it stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image. Inputs go up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels. Free and watermark-free: study the preview first, then a free Google sign-in unlocks downloads — 10 conversions per hour before signing in, 60 per hour and 300 per day signed in.
Can I feed a vector file or a scanned drawing back in?
The tracer reads raster only: PNG, JPEG and WEBP. TIFF and BMP are not accepted — save the sheet as a PNG first — and there is no round-trip path for an existing vector file. Download links expire after 1 hour; uploads and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule.