How to Vectorize a Logo — Tracing, Redrawing and When to Use Which
The print shop wants "the logo in curves", the site builder wants SVG — and all you have is a PNG from a ten‑year‑old website. The source files vanished along with the designer. The situation is so common that "logo vectorization" is a standalone freelance service. Let's sort out when you can do it yourself in ten minutes, when it takes an evening, and when paying is the honest choice.
Two paths. Auto‑tracing (Inkscape, online tools): fast, but decent only on simple one‑color marks with clean edges. Manual redrawing (Figma, Illustrator): slower, but produces genuinely clean vectors. The rule: one‑color mark without fine detail — try tracing; gradients, text, small details — redraw only.
First: are you sure the vector doesn't exist?
Before reconstructing from raster, spend ten minutes hunting the original — it exists more often than you'd think:
- Email and archives. Messages from the designer or studio, old cloud folders. Look for .ai, .eps, .svg, .pdf.
- Vendors. The print shop that made your business cards or the agency that built the site often keeps the vector.
- Your own website. The header logo may be an SVG — how to check and extract it: how to download a logo from a site.
- A known brand? Then the vector definitely exists in catalogs — ours has hundreds of brands in SVG.
A found original always beats any reconstruction.
Path 1. Auto‑tracing — 10 minutes
Tracing is an algorithm that outlines pixel boundaries with curves. The best free tool is Inkscape:
- Open the PNG (File → Open).
- Select the image → Path → Trace Bitmap.
- One‑color logo — Single scan (Brightness cutoff); multi‑color — Multicolor with the color count matching the logo.
- Adjust the Threshold while watching the preview: the goal is clean edges without ragged holes.
- Apply → delete the source bitmap → Save As → SVG.
Post‑processing is almost always needed: Path → Simplify (Ctrl+L) removes the excess nodes the algorithm placed on every pixel — otherwise the file weighs hundreds of KB (why that matters: SVG optimization).
Online alternatives (vectorizer services) do the same without installing anything, minus fine controls and plus free‑tier limits.
- A small or compressed source. From a 200×200 PNG or an artifact‑ridden JPG the algorithm traces the distortions, not the logo. Minimum for sane results: 500–1000 px on the long side.
- Gradients. Tracing shatters smooth transitions into dozens of stepped shapes.
- Small text. Letters become blobby curves — text is always re‑typeset, never traced.
- Photographic elements. Not meaningfully vectorizable at all.
Path 2. Manual redrawing — an evening
The honest reconstruction: the raster goes underneath, and shapes are rebuilt on top. In Figma:
- Insert the PNG, lock the layer, drop opacity to 30–50%.
- Build on top from geometric primitives: circles, rectangles, boolean ops (Union, Subtract). The pen tool (P) only for what geometry can't assemble.
- Don't trace the text — identify the font (WhatTheFont, FontSquirrel Matcherator help) and re‑typeset it. If the font is paid, pick a close free one.
- Sample colors from large solid fills — or better, find the exact brand codes; we cover how in a separate guide.
- Verify silhouettes: overlay your vector on the source and toggle visibility. Deviations show at edges and curves.
- Export SVG — then assemble the full file kit per the format guide.
Sounds long, but a mid‑complexity logo takes 1–3 hours even without experience. Bonus: you end up with a perfectly clean file — better than many "originals".
Path 3. Ordering it
"Vectorization" on freelance marketplaces is cheap and takes 1–2 days. Order it when the logo is complex (gradients, illustration, lettering) and time is short. Check the delivery: curves (<path>) rather than an embedded bitmap, text outlined or the font attached, colors as exact codes.
Comparing the paths
| Tracing | DIY redraw | Ordering | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | 10–30 min | 1–3 hours | 1–2 days |
| Price | free | free | cheap |
| Simple mark | ✅ great | ✅ great | ✅ |
| Gradients, detail | ⛔ poor | ⚠️ patience | ✅ |
| Text | ⛔ blobs | ✅ re‑typeset | ✅ |
| File cleanliness | ⚠️ needs cleanup | ✅ perfect | ✅ verify |
FAQ
Is an online "PNG to SVG converter" the same thing? Yes — the same tracing, minus settings. And some services just wrap the raster in an SVG shell: the extension changes, the pixels don't. Check: open the result in a text editor; you should see <path>, not <image>.
Can AI vectorize? Models that generate SVG from images are emerging — already decent on simple marks, still behind careful manual work on complex ones. Apply the same checks: clean curves, sane node counts.
The logo isn't mine — may I redraw it? For legitimate referential use (showing the brand in a deck, a bank icon in a list) — yes, but the redraw must be exact, with no distortion. The legal side in detail: can you use someone else's logo.
How many nodes should a good vector have? Benchmark: a simple mark — dozens, not hundreds. Open the result in Inkscape and press N (node editor): a curve beaded with points means unfinished tracing. A smooth arc takes 2–4 nodes.
How do I redraw a gradient? Eyedrop both end colors from the source and rebuild the gradient with the editor's tool — don't "repeat it in pixels". In SVG a gradient is a mathematical <linearGradient> with exact stops, cleaner than any trace.
Preparing the source: half of tracing's success
Before feeding the PNG to the algorithm, spend five minutes on prep — the quality jump is real:
- Find the largest version. Reverse image search often surfaces higher‑res copies. Also check the brand site's web archive.
- Boost contrast. Raise contrast and kill halftones at the edges — boundaries get easier to find.
- Clean the background. Stains, watermarks and textures become extra shapes. Paint them white before tracing.
- Crop. Trace the logo, not the whole catalog page it was printed on.
- For JPG — soften the artifacts. A slight blur (Gaussian 0.5–1 px) paradoxically improves JPG tracing: the algorithm stops outlining compression blocks.
After vectorization: finishing to professional grade
Getting curves isn't the finish line. The polish checklist:
- Simplify (Ctrl+L in Inkscape) — remove per‑pixel nodes.
- True up the geometry. Replace almost‑circles with real circles, almost‑straights with straights: the tracer doesn't know the arc was meant to be perfect — you do.
- Close contours, sweep the dust. Zoom to 800% — you'll find micro‑shapes and contour gaps.
- Assign exact colors. Not "whatever the trace produced" but the brand HEX from guidelines or the source SVG — how to find it is a separate guide.
- Run the optimizer — the final file gets several times lighter with our SVGO guide.
- Overlay‑compare with the original — the last check before delivery.
AI vectorization: the state of 2026
AI vectorizers deserve their own note — in a couple of years they've grown from a toy into a working tool for part of the job. Models generating SVG from raster already handle flat marks of medium complexity decently: fewer "beads" on curves than classical tracing, meaningful shapes instead of blind pixel‑outlining. The weak spots remain: text (always re‑typeset), fine decorative detail and gradient transitions. The practical mode: run the AI variant alongside Inkscape — and pick the better of the two as the base for manual finishing. No tool cancels the finishing stage: the checklist above is identical for every path.
In short
Hunt for the original vector first — it exists more often than you think. Not found: a simple one‑color mark — Inkscape Trace Bitmap plus Simplify; everything else — a manual redraw over a translucent source with re‑typeset text. Either way, the final file is a clean SVG with exact brand colors.
For known brands, skip the whole process: our logo catalog already holds the official vectors — download the SVG and move on.