How to convert PNG to SVG
- 1
On your computer: Inkscape (free)
Inkscape is free for Windows, Mac and Linux. Choose File › Import and pick your PNG. Select it, then open Path › Trace Bitmap (Shift+Alt+B). For a one-colour logo, use Single scan with Brightness cutoff. For a colour logo, use Multiple scans with Colors. Click Apply, drag the new vector off the PNG, delete the PNG, and save with File › Save As › Plain SVG.
- 2
In your browser: SVGcode (free, open source)
Open svgco.de and drop in your PNG. It traces with Potrace, colour by colour. Lower the number of colours for a cleaner file, and raise the speck size to drop stray dots. Then save the SVG. You can install it as an app, and it works offline.
- 3
If you have it: Adobe Illustrator
Choose File › Place to add the PNG, select it, and open Window › Image Trace. Pick a preset such as Black and White or Low Color. Then choose Object › Image Trace › Expand to turn the result into paths you can edit, and save as SVG.
PNG vs SVG: format overview
Portable Network Graphics
PNG Development Group (Thomas Boutell) · 1996
- Compression
- lossless
- Color depth
- 16-bit
- Transparency
- Yes
- ✓ Lossless compression — pixel-perfect quality
- ✓ Full alpha transparency (8-bit alpha channel)
- ✗ Large file sizes for photos
Scalable Vector Graphics
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) · 1999
- Compression
- none
- Color depth
- unlimited (vector)
- Transparency
- Yes
- ✓ Resolution-independent — scales to any size without quality loss
- ✓ Text-based XML — searchable and editable
PNG magic bytes: 89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A
Why convert PNG to SVG?
PNG stores a grid of pixels. SVG stores shapes as math: lines, curves and fill colours. That is why an SVG stays sharp at any size, while a PNG gets blocky when you blow it up.
There is no exact way to turn pixels into shapes. A tracer has to find each edge and draw a curve along it. This is called tracing, or vectorizing. Inkscape's Trace Bitmap and the SVGcode web app both use Potrace, a free tracer written by Peter Selinger.
Watch out for fake SVGs. Some converters skip tracing and just put your PNG inside an SVG file. The file ends in .svg, but it still holds pixels. It blurs when you zoom in, and a design app can't recolour or reshape it, because there are no paths. It is bigger, too: the picture is stored as text, which adds a third. In our test a 4.7 MB PNG became a 6.2 MB wrapped SVG. To check a file, open it in a text editor. If you see "<image" and "data:image/png;base64", it was wrapped. If you see "<path d=", it was traced.
Before you trace, ask if you need an SVG at all. Cricut Design Space takes PNG uploads and builds the cut lines itself. For a site icon, PNG to ICO makes a favicon, and PNG to WebP makes a lighter web image. If you already have an SVG and need a picture, SVG to PNG and SVG to PDF work here, in your browser.
Common reasons to convert PNG to SVG:
- ›Printing a logo large, on a banner, sign or shirt, with clean edges
- ›Getting cut lines for a Cricut, Silhouette or laser cutter
- ›Changing a logo's colours or shapes in Inkscape, Illustrator or Figma
- ›Using an icon on a website that stays sharp on every screen
Quality & file size: PNG to SVG
A traced SVG keeps shapes, not pixels. How good it looks depends mostly on the image. We traced three files with Potrace, the engine inside Inkscape and SVGcode, at its default settings.
A clean logo traces well. A 512×512 PNG logo of 3,852 bytes became a 1,266-byte SVG: one path, made in about 0.1 seconds. That is a third of the size, and it stays sharp at any zoom. One catch: Potrace traces in one colour, so our dark-blue logo came out black. Set the fill colour afterwards, or use a colour mode (Inkscape's Multiple scans, Illustrator's Low Color) that stacks one layer per colour.
A small PNG traces badly. The same logo shrunk to 64×64 pixels gave a lumpy ring and a blunt triangle tip. The tracer can only follow the edges it can see, so start from the largest, sharpest PNG you have.
A photo doesn't work. A 1920×1280 night-sky photo, saved as a 4.7 MB PNG, became a 2.9 MB black-and-white SVG with 62,527 path commands. All the colour was gone. A four-shade trace grew to 10.1 MB, more than twice the PNG. For photos, keep the PNG.
Transparency carries over. The traced logo had no background shape at all, so the empty areas stay clear on any colour behind them.