How to convert a PNG or JPG picture to SVG
A picture becomes an SVG by tracing, not by renaming. How to convert a PNG or JPG to SVG for Cricut or the web, which pictures trace well, and how to check.
Published
To convert a PNG or JPG to SVG, the picture has to be traced: software finds the edges of each area of colour and redraws them as shapes. Open the picture in a tracing tool, choose black and white or a small number of colours, adjust until the preview is clean, and save the SVG. It works well on logos, clip art, silhouettes and line drawings, and badly on photographs.
The quick way
- Open Image to SVG and choose the picture. It is traced in the browser and is not uploaded.
- Pick black and white for a cut file, a logo in one colour or a drawing. Pick colours for flat-colour artwork, and set the number of colours the artwork really has.
- Move the threshold, in black and white, or the number of colours until the preview matches the picture.
- Download the SVG.
PNG to SVG and JPG to SVG are the same tracer with advice for each format.
Why it has to be traced
A PNG or JPG is a grid of coloured pixels. An SVG is a list of shapes: outlines made of lines and curves. Nothing in the pixel file says where one shape ends and the next begins, so a program has to work that out.
Two shortcuts do not work:
- Renaming picture.png to picture.svg changes the name and nothing else. Programs will refuse to open it.
- Wrapping. Some converters, and “Save as SVG” in some programs, put the original pixels inside an SVG file untouched. The file ends in .svg but still blurs when enlarged, and a cutting machine finds nothing in it to cut.
Which pictures convert well
| Picture | Result | Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Logo or icon in flat colours | Very good | Colours, as few as the artwork has |
| Silhouette | Very good | Black and white |
| Line drawing, lettering, signature | Good | Black and white |
| Clip art with shading or gradients | Fair: the shading becomes bands | Colours |
| Photograph | Poor: ragged patches, like a poster | See below |
Prepare the picture
A trace can only be as good as the picture it follows.
- Use the largest copy you have. Small pictures give lumpy curves. Around 800 pixels wide or more is a good start.
- Prefer PNG to JPG if you have both. JPG compression leaves faint speckle round sharp edges, which a tracer can turn into tiny blobs.
- Crop to the part you want.
- For a drawing on paper, photograph it straight on, in even light with no shadow across it, or scan it.
- Raise the contrast if the lines are grey or the paper is not white.
Other ways to trace
| Tool | How |
|---|---|
| Inkscape (free) | Import the picture, then Path, Trace Bitmap. The full method is in Inkscape Trace Bitmap |
| Adobe Illustrator | Place the picture, select it, choose Object, Image Trace, Make, then Expand to turn the result into paths |
| Cricut Design Space | Upload the PNG or JPG itself. You remove the background with its tools and it makes a cut shape from what is left, without an SVG file |
| Silhouette Studio | Open the picture and use the Trace panel to make cut lines round it |
The last two skip the SVG entirely, which is fine for cutting a simple shape once. An SVG is worth making when the design has several colours, needs editing, or will be used again elsewhere.
Converting for Cricut
A blade follows outlines, so a cut file needs clean closed shapes and few of them.
- Trace in black and white for a design cut from one material. One colour gives one set of outlines.
- For a layered design, trace in colours, with one colour for each material. Design Space sorts the layers of an uploaded SVG by colour.
- Remove specks. Every stray dot is a piece the machine will try to cut. Raise the “ignore specks” setting until they are gone.
- Watch the fine detail. Thin lines and tiny holes that look fine on screen tear in vinyl and card. Thicken them by lowering the threshold, so that paler pixels count as ink, or cut the design larger.
- Keep it simple. Design Space refuses an SVG with more than 5,000 paths, and long before that limit a busy trace is slow to cut and tedious to weed.
Then upload it as described in how to upload an SVG to Cricut Design Space.
Converting a photo
A photograph has soft gradients where a tracer needs edges. Traced in colours it becomes a stack of irregular patches, large in file size and no use to a blade. Three approaches work better:
- A silhouette. Cut the subject out against a plain background, then trace in black and white for a solid outline.
- A few flat tones. Reduce the photo to two to four tones, which gives the look of a stencil or a screen print. Each tone becomes a layer.
- Line art. For a pen, a laser or an engraving tip, redraw the photo as hatching, dots or one continuous line, which is what the Plotcaster editor is for.
Check the result
Open the SVG in the SVG viewer. It counts what is inside the file. A real conversion shows paths and no images. If it shows one image and no paths, the file is a wrapped picture and needs tracing.
The other test is to zoom in a long way. Shapes stay sharp at any zoom. Pixels turn into squares.
Common problems
| What you see | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Edges are lumpy or stepped | The picture is too small | Start from a larger copy; raise the smoothing |
| Lots of tiny blobs | JPG speckle or scanner dust | Raise the speck setting and the smoothing |
| Thin lines break up or disappear | Threshold too high | Lower the threshold so more of the line counts as ink |
| Areas fill in solid | Threshold too low | Raise it |
| Extra slivers between colours | More colours chosen than the artwork has | Reduce the number of colours |
| A coloured background was traced as a shape | The background is a colour like any other | Delete that shape in a vector editor, or ungroup and delete it in the cutting program |
| The SVG is larger than the picture | Too much detail, usually a photo | Simplify, or keep the picture as a PNG |
| Still blurry when enlarged | The file is a wrapped picture | Trace it properly |
Questions
Is converting a JPG different from converting a PNG? The method is the same. A JPG needs a little more smoothing and speck removal, and it has no transparency, so its background is always part of the picture.
Does the SVG lose quality? A trace is a new drawing made from the picture. On clean artwork at a good size the difference is hard to see. On small or fuzzy pictures the outline is a best guess.
Can a traced SVG be edited? Yes, in any vector editor: move points, change colours, delete parts.