guides / inkscape-png-to-svg

PNG to SVG in Inkscape: Trace Bitmap, step by step

Updated 11 August 2026·6 min read·Single scan, multicolour, and the settings that matter

Inkscape ships the most capable free tracer that has a user interface: potrace, the same engine a generation of tools is built on, wrapped in a dialog with a live preview. It is excellent at black-and-white line art, workable at colour, and free forever. The only real obstacle is that the dialog assumes you already know what a brightness cutoff is — so here is the walkthrough it doesn't give you.

1. Open the PNG

File → Open (or drag the PNG onto the canvas) and, if asked, either import choice is fine — link and embed both trace identically, since tracing reads the pixels, not the file reference. Keep the image selected; the trace dialog operates on the current selection, and the single most common "nothing happens" report is an empty selection.

2. Path → Trace Bitmap

Open Path → Trace Bitmap (Shift+Alt+B). The dialog has two personalities. Single scan produces one path in one colour — this is classic potrace, and for logos, stamps, signatures and line art it is the best output any free tool will give you. The default Brightness cutoff mode turns everything darker than a threshold into the shape; drag the threshold until the preview shows solid forms without speckle fill.

Multicolor runs several scans and stacks them: choose Colors, set the number of scans, and each becomes its own filled path, one per tone. That is the mode "png to svg with colour" searchers want — though the result is a stack of layered paths, heavier and rougher than single-scan output, for the reasons the tracing guide explains.

Try this in the editor

Load the sample icon, select a path, and change its fill — the source panel updates as you go.

3. The three settings that matter

Speckles drops blobs smaller than the given size — raise it to clean up JPEG noise and dust, lower it if small details (dots on i's, full stops) start vanishing.
Smooth corners rounds sharp junctions. Line art usually wants it low; photographed or scanned sources want it higher to hide raster jitter.
Optimize merges consecutive curve segments. Leave it on: the path count drops substantially and the shape change is invisible at any sane zoom.

4. After the trace

The traced path lands directly on top of the original bitmap — it can look like nothing happened. Drag the top object aside and you'll find the vector; delete the bitmap underneath once you are happy. Heavy traces respond well to Path → Simplify (Ctrl+L), which removes nodes the shape doesn't need — repeat it cautiously, it compounds. Then save with File → Save As → Plain SVG: the default Inkscape SVG carries editor metadata other tools don't read, and the difference is pure weight — the file-size guide shows where those bytes hide. A final pass through the Optimizer tightens coordinates too.

5. When Inkscape is the wrong tool

For a one-off colour logo, installing a desktop app to move three sliders is a lot of ceremony. The in-browser PNG to SVG converter does posterised colour tracing with a colour-count slider and nothing to install, and nothing is uploaded while it does it. Inkscape stays the right answer when the source is black-and-white line art (single-scan potrace is unbeatable there), when you need centerline tracing of strokes, or when the trace is the first step of a longer editing session you were going to do in Inkscape anyway.

Next: PNG to SVG in Photoshop or Illustrator: what actually works →All guides