Convert JPG to SVG
A photo of ink on paper traced into cut-ready vector shapes, with the paper left out.
- Nothing is uploaded
- Works offline after first visit
- Open source
- No watermark · limit is your device’s memory; phones hold less
Turn a JPG of a drawing, signature or design into a black and white SVG ready for Cricut, Silhouette or a laser cutter. It is free, needs no account and adds no watermark, and your files are not uploaded: everything runs in your browser on your device. The size limit is your device’s memory, and phones hold less; give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use, and then it works offline.
Done
Open the network tab. Your files never appear in it.
Add files and run the tool to see every request this tab makes.
Your files are processed on this device and never sent to a server. Reload the page to clear everything from memory.
Most JPGs that need to become an SVG are a photo of something drawn on paper: a hand-lettered quote for a vinyl decal, a child’s drawing for a T-shirt, a signature for a stamp or an engraving. Cutting machines and laser software follow vector paths, not pixels, so the drawing has to be traced first.
A worked example: you photograph a pen sketch of a mountain on white printer paper with your phone and get a 4032×3024 JPG. The paper is not pure white in the photo, more of a light grey with a shadow in one corner. Drop it here and Black and white with “Leave out white” is already chosen. The threshold between ink and paper is worked out from the photo’s own brightness, so the grey paper and faint shadow fall on the white side and are left out. The result is black shapes only, ready to import into a design app and cut.
JPG compression leaves faint blocky noise around dark lines. Most of it is below the threshold, and specks smaller than a few pixels are skipped when the edges are traced. Photograph in even daylight, fill the frame with the drawing, and crop away the table edges before tracing for the cleanest lines.
How it works
- Drop the JPG; Black and white with the paper left out is already chosen.
- Check the preview: the ink should be solid black and the paper gone.
- Press Convert to SVG, then upload the SVG to your cutting or engraving software.
In your browser, not on a server
Your browser decodes the image in the tab. It is scaled so its longest side is between 400 and 1,000 pixels (800 for the Detailed style) and handed to imagetracerjs (public domain), running in a background worker. The colours are reduced to a palette (2, up to 8 or up to 32), the outline of every area of each colour is traced, and each outline is fitted with straight lines and quadratic curves. The shapes are scaled back to the image’s own width and height and written as SVG paths. Black and white first sets each pixel to black or white with a threshold chosen from the image’s own brightness (Otsu’s method).
Compared with upload-based tools: Online vectorizers upload your artwork, and the good ones charge per image or add a watermark to the free result. Here the logo or drawing is traced on your device, as many files as you like, with a preview beside the original before you download.
Verify it yourself. Give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use, then turn off Wi-Fi or switch to airplane mode and run the tool again. Or open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd-Option-I on a Mac), pick the Network tab, and watch it while you convert. The panel above does the same count for you.
Questions
Will the SVG work in Cricut Design Space?
Yes. Design Space uploads SVG files, and with the paper left out each black shape arrives as a cut path. Weld or attach the shapes in Design Space if you want them to cut as one piece.
And in Silhouette Studio or a laser cutter?
Silhouette Studio opens SVG in Designer Edition and above; the free Basic Edition does not import SVG files. Laser software such as LightBurn, and Glowforge’s app, import SVG directly. Set the cut or engrave settings there.
Why did part of my drawing disappear?
Pencil and thin grey lines can be lighter than the threshold, especially in a dim photo. Retrace the lines with a black pen or marker, or take the photo in brighter, even light. Uneven light that leaves one side of the page darker can also turn part of the paper black.
Can I keep the colours of a JPG?
Yes: choose Logo for up to 8 flat colours or Detailed for up to 32, and untick “Leave out white” to keep the white areas. JPG has no transparency, so the background is always a colour in the image until you leave out white.
Is the file uploaded anywhere?
No. There is no server in this process. The page is a static file and the work is done by code running inside your browser tab. Give the page a short while after one visit to save itself for offline use; then you can turn off Wi-Fi and it still works.
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Guides
- How to convert an image to SVGA PNG or JPG is a grid of pixels; an SVG is a set of shapes. Turning one into the other is called tracing. Here is what to expect, and the steps.