Image Trace in Illustrator vs. Inkscape vs. a browser vectorizer

Three ways to trace the same image

All three tools do the same basic job — reduce an image to regions of color and draw smooth outlines around them — but they put the controls in different places. Illustrator leads with presets and sliders, Inkscape with scan modes, and JustVectorize with the palette: which colors survive, decided before anything is traced. Which one suits you depends mostly on what you’ll do with the result.

Adobe Illustrator: Image Trace

1. Place the image (File → Place) and select it.
2. Open Window → Image Trace.
3. Pick a preset — High Fidelity Photo, 6 Colors, Black and White Logo, Line Art, and others — or set the mode (Color, Grayscale, or Black and White) and the color count yourself. To trace with your own swatches, set the palette to Document Library.
4. Under Advanced, adjust Paths, Corners, and Noise; choose the method (abutting shapes or overlapping ones); tick Ignore White to drop a white background, and Snap Curves To Lines for geometric art.
5. Click Expand (or Object → Image Trace → Expand) to turn the trace into editable paths.

Where it shines: you trace inside the editor you’ll finish in, the presets are a fast start, and everything Illustrator can do to paths is one click away afterwards. What to know: it needs a Creative Cloud subscription, and choosing exactly which shades merge usually means tuning sliders and re-tracing, or recoloring after the fact.

Inkscape: Trace Bitmap

1. Import the image (File → Import) and select it.
2. Open Path → Trace Bitmap (Shift + Alt + B).
3. For a one-color result, use a single scan — brightness cutoff, edge detection, or color quantization, plus a centerline mode for line art. For color, use multiple scans — colors, grays, or brightness steps — and set how many.
4. Set the options: suppress speckles, smooth corners, and optimize paths. For multiple scans, keep Stack scans on to avoid hairline gaps between colors, and use Remove background to drop the bottom layer.
5. Apply. The trace lands on top of the image; move it aside and delete the original.

Where it shines: it’s free and open source, SVG is its native format, and centerline tracing is built for single-stroke line art — useful for pen plotters. What to know: color control is essentially the number of scans, and busy images tend to need more cleanup by hand afterwards.

JustVectorize: in the browser

1. Drop the image in — drag, browse, or paste. It’s traced straight away with an automatic palette.
2. Open Settings → Palette → Choose palette to see every color as a swatch. Merge, split, recolor to an exact hex value, or hide any of them, with an instant preview.
3. Choose a format and a preset — General use, Easy editing, or Cutting & engraving — and fine-tune under Advanced if you need to.
4. Apply changes, check the result against the original on the compare canvas, and download.

Where it shines: nothing to install, precise control over which colors survive, and exports aimed at where the file is going — SVG, EPS, PDF, DXF in real units, and PNG. What to know: it traces one image at a time, uploads are capped at 4 MB, and projects live in your browser. For heavy editing afterwards you’ll still open the result in a vector editor.

Side by side

Which one should you use?

• Already work in Illustrator and the image is simple? Image Trace is right there.
• Want a free desktop tool, or single-line centerline traces for a plotter? Inkscape.
• Need exact control over colors, a cut-ready SVG or DXF, or no software to install? Trace in the browser.

They also combine well. Trace in the browser, where the palette is easiest to control, then open the SVG or PDF in Illustrator or Inkscape to finish it — the logo guide covers the Adobe-compatible export. New to all of this? Start with how to vectorize an image, step by step.