Guides
Practical writing on getting good results out of a raster-to-vector trace — what the settings really do, and what to do when the output is wrong.
The instructions cover what each control does. These guides cover the harder question: which control to reach for when the result in front of you is not the one you wanted.
How to vectorize a logo from a low-resolution JPG
The most common tracing job and the one with the most ways to go wrong. Why anti-aliasing and JPEG ringing fight the tracer, where to look for a better source first, a seven-step settings recipe, what to check at 100% zoom, and an honest account of what tracing cannot recover from a small file.
Why your traced photo looks blotchy — and how to fix it
Banding across a sky, mottled skin, hard patches where a gradient should be. The five settings that cause it — tone count, fill size, source type, source noise, quality level — with the fix for each, starting points by subject, and the file-size trade-off you cannot avoid.
SVG vs PNG: which download should you use?
Both buttons give you the same artwork, and then behave completely differently. Scaling, file size (vectors are not always smaller), editing, where SVG causes trouble, where PNG is simply correct, and a decision table by job.
Where to start
If you are new to the tool, read the instructions first — the Quick Start there takes about a minute and covers the four steps that produce a usable result. Come back here when you want to understand why a particular result looks the way it does.
If you are here because a trace came out badly, the fastest triage is: a photograph that looks banded or patchy is the blotchy guide; a logo that looks fuzzy, speckled, or has filled-in letters is the logo guide; a file that will not open, scale, or upload where you need it is SVG vs PNG.