Most disappointing traces have one of four causes: a poor source, too many colors, the wrong settings for the job, or a result nobody zoomed in on. Here’s the fix for each, roughly in the order you’ll meet them.
Before you upload
1. Start from the largest, sharpest copy
Every edge in the vector is reconstructed from the pixels along it. A logo 120 pixels wide simply doesn’t contain the shape of its curves. Find the original export, the print PDF, or at least the biggest version online — around 1,000 to 2,000 pixels across is the sweet spot. Much larger than that is scaled down before tracing and only makes the upload slower.
2. Prefer PNG — and plan for JPG
PNG is lossless; JPG leaves a haze of compression noise around every edge, which traces as slivers. If JPG is all you have, expect to use fewer colors and a higher minimum area. PNG to SVG, and JPG to SVG explains why.
3. Crop to what you want
Borders, watermarks, and background clutter become shapes too. Cropping first also gives the tracer’s resolution to the part you care about.
In the palette editor
4. Match the color count to the art
Count the colors a person would name, add one for the background, and set Simplify Colors to that. Too few and details merge into their neighbours; too many and you trace noise. The levels are nested, so sliding back and forth never scrambles colors you’ve already grouped.
5. Merge the in-between colors along edges
Anti-aliasing blends every edge across a pixel or two. Those blends show up as extra swatches and trace as thin slivers. Drag each one onto the color it belongs to.
6. Hide the background instead of tracing it
A traced background is a big shape you’ll only delete later. Hide its swatch in the palette editor, or switch on Remove background in the settings when the background isn’t one flat color.
7. Set exact colors now, not later
Traced colors are averages. If the art has defined colors — a brand palette, pure black ink — click the swatch and type the hex value. It’s one edit here instead of dozens of fills to fix afterwards.
In the settings
8. Turn on “Refine curves to color edges”
Under Advanced → Detail. It moves each boundary point off the corner of a pixel and onto the actual color edge before curves are fitted — the single biggest lever on how smooth curves look.
9. Fit to lines & arcs for anything geometric
Logos, icons, charts, and technical drawings are made of straight lines and circles. Fit to lines & arcs gives them back as exactly that, with far fewer nodes and a much smaller file. Leave it off for hand-drawn and organic art, where you want the curves.
10. Use Minimum area for speckle
Regions smaller than Minimum area merge into their closest-colored neighbour. Raise it for dusty scans, noisy JPGs, and vinyl you’ll have to weed; lower it — even to 0 — when tiny details must survive.
11. Choose the preset for the destination
General use for almost everything. Easy editing when someone will recolor the file — shapes are stacked and grouped by color. Cutting & engraving for lasers, vinyl cutters, and pen plotters — one stroke per edge, so nothing is cut twice. Details in making cut files.
Before you download
12. Check at 100% or more, outlines over the original
Switch the canvas to Outlines over original, press 1 for 100%, and pan over the difficult parts: small text, thin lines, sharp corners. In Result only, hovering shows the original through a lens wherever you point. Fix what you find, then Apply changes — and undo with Ctrl + Z (⌘ + Z) if a change made things worse.
One last time-saver: output size and grouping are applied when you download, not by re-tracing, so resizing an export is instant. Want the full walkthrough? Read how to vectorize an image, step by step, or try these on your own image.