Convert raster images to clean, scalable SVG vectors entirely in your browser. vtracer compiled to WebAssembly plus a Canvas/JS preprocessing stage. Images never leave your machine: no upload, no backend.
Live app: https://rastertrace.com/
- PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP input (anything the browser decodes)
- Premultiplied-alpha upscaling (no edge halos), binary alpha (no fringe fragmentation)
- Median-cut + k-means color quantization in perceptual Oklab space with transparent-area backfill
- 3x3 majority filter to clean quantization dither
- Optional edge-preserving median denoise for photographic sources
- Background removal: auto-detect from border sampling, hex color, or eyedropper pick from the image; perceptual match tolerance; edge trim chokes the cutout and defringe repaints leftover fringe without shrinking thin details
- Purpose-based export profiles: Web optimized, Balanced, High detail, Max detail, Pixel exact, Print & cutting, Mono stencil (black/white), and Laser stencil set colors, cleanup, path detail, and output options together (all controls stay editable)
- Stencil mode: true black/white binary tracing for laser cutting, stamps, and silhouettes, with an adjustable brightness threshold and a choice of black-on-transparent or white-on-black ink
- SVG size export: preserve source pixels or write a custom width/height in px, mm, cm, or in, with the viewBox preserved
- Minified output option (also compresses path data with relative commands for roughly 30% smaller SVG files), or accessible output with
role="img"and a<title>from the file name - Straighten lines slider: snaps slightly wobbly or bumpy traced edges to true straight lines while keeping corners and real curves
- Advanced tracing controls: path coordinate precision, curve segment length, spline splitting
- Color-count presets from 2 to 256 with matched cleanup levels: fewer colors get more aggressive speckle and layer cleanup for flat print-style output
- Flat-image detection: logos, text, and pixel art are detected at load; the color count snaps to the image, with every control still editable.
- Crisp edges toggle: sharper corner tracing for hard-edged sources, available manually for any image.
- Path modes: smooth splines, straight polygons, or pixel-exact outlines with nearest-neighbor upscaling for pixel art
- Corner rounding slider: fine control over how sharply angles trace, from hard corners to flowing curves
- Layering modes: stacked shapes (smallest files) or non-overlapping cutout shapes for laser cutting, vinyl, and CNC
- EXIF orientation respected: rotated phone photos load upright without distortion
- Invert (negative) toggle: trace the opposite regions, useful for stencils; composes with rotation and applies to the whole pipeline
- Paste an image from the clipboard (Ctrl/Cmd+V) to load it, alongside drag-and-drop and the file picker
- Same-fill paths grouped under shared
<g fill>elements for smaller SVG files - Upscale "Auto (fit 2048)" traces small images at the full 2048 px budget for maximum curve quality
- Live re-trace on setting changes, Save As dialogs for SVG, PNG, PDF, and DXF, clipboard copy, and PNG export at the trace resolution
- Vector PDF export (true curves, physical page size when set) for print shops and design handoff
- DXF export (R12) for CAD, CNC, and cutters: one closed polyline per shape, one layer per color, mm units when a physical size is set
- Settings persist across visits and image replacements (flat-image detection still tunes colors per image); one-click Reset settings
- Works offline after the first visit (service worker, everything stays local)
- Zoomable preview: pinch, scroll wheel, buttons, Fit, or Actual size (1:1); drag to pan
- Vector eraser that works across the full preview, including strokes started outside an image edge, with a zoom-aware circular cursor, adjustable diameter,
[and]size shortcuts, undo/redo, and Restore Original. Cleanup masks are included in SVG and PNG exports. - Photoshop-style rectangular and elliptical marquees plus a point-to-point polygonal lasso. Use
M,Shift+M, orL, hold Shift to constrain proportions, hold Alt/Option to draw from center, then press Delete/Backspace to remove the selected area. - Rotate the loaded image in 90 degree steps
- Trace size capped at 2048 px on the longest side: small images upscale for smoother curves, large photos downscale proportionally (the status line reports the applied scale). Opt-in Ultra mode raises the cap to 4096 px for the cleanest fabrication exports (slower, high memory)
- Guidance built in: photographic sources and high path counts get footer status suggestions, with separate tracing, vector cleanup, and SVG export guides available from Help
- Three-panel editor with a canvas-only center, independently scrolling controls, responsive mobile stacking, keyboard operation, and WCAG AA contrast
index.html app shell
sw.js service worker: offline cache for the static app
css/styles.css design tokens + layout
js/preprocess.js pure pixel/string ops (Node-testable, no browser APIs)
js/vectorexport.js DXF and PDF writers from traced SVG (Node-testable)
js/eraser.js eraser mask geometry (Node-testable)
js/pipeline.js decode, premultiplied rasterize, worker round-trip
js/worker.js Web Worker: preprocessing + wasm trace off the main thread
js/app.js app core: trace loop, image loading, menus, startup
js/context.js shared DOM references and mutable state
js/settings.js preferences, profiles, presets, persistence
js/exporters.js export post-processing and SVG/PNG/PDF/DXF save
js/cleanup-tools.js eyedropper, marquee/lasso selections, vector eraser
js/view.js zoom and pan
pkg/ wasm-pack output (committed so Pages serves it as-is)
wasm/ Rust wrapper crate around vtracer
tests/ node --test unit tests
npm test # unit tests (node --test)
npm run serve # http://localhost:8137
npm run build:wasm # rebuild pkg/ (needs rustup target wasm32-unknown-unknown + wasm-pack)Static files only. The GitHub Actions workflow runs the tests and publishes the repository to GitHub Pages on every push to main.
Requires OffscreenCanvas and module workers: Chrome/Edge 109+, Firefox 111+, Safari 16.4+. Chrome and Edge offer native Save As dialogs; other supported browsers use their standard download flow because they do not expose a file-location picker to web pages.