JPG (JPEG) pictures are made of pixels and are saved with lossy compression, which leaves faint blocks and halos around sharp edges. Converting one to SVG means tracing it: the colours in the picture are grouped, and each area becomes a vector shape that stays sharp at any size. The tracing here is built to ignore the compression noise rather than trace every speck of it.
How to convert a JPG to SVG
- Upload one or more JPG files (or a
.zipof a folder). - Choose what the picture shows, or keep Automatic:
- Logo or icon or Clip art for graphics saved as JPG;
- Line art for black drawings and text on white;
- Scanned or photographed page for paper photographed with a phone;
- Photo for a colour poster of a photograph.
- Download the SVG, and tick PDF or EPS if a printer or sign maker asked for one.
JPEG noise, and how to deal with it
- The tracer merges colours that are almost the same, so the faint blocks around a logo do not become separate shapes.
- Specks smaller than the picture type's limit are left out. If dots remain, raise Leave out specks smaller than under More options (try 30 or 50 square pixels).
- For heavily compressed pictures, set Noise removal to 1 or 2. It evens out blocks and grain before tracing, at the cost of slightly rounder small details.
No transparency in JPG
A JPG always has a background, usually white. Tick Leave out the background colour and the colour around the edge of the picture is not traced, so the SVG has a transparent background. Line art, scans and signatures are traced in one colour and never include the paper.
Photos
A photo becomes a poster: areas of flat colour, stacked so no gaps show. Choose the number of colours yourself (8 to 16 is a good start); every extra colour adds shapes and nodes. A photo is traced at up to 4 megapixels, and fine texture such as hair or grass becomes many small patches. For logos, drawings and text, results are much cleaner than for photos.
Phone photos
Photos taken with a phone are turned upright first, using the rotation the phone stored, so the SVG is the same way up as the picture on your screen. HEIC photos from iPhones are read too.
More about what this tool reads and writes: Image Vectorizer.