Vectorize Black & White Logos to SVG
Upload a black-and-white logo or icon — Sharp handles grayscale and thresholding, Potrace traces smooth Bezier paths, and SVGO finishes optimization. The output is an ultra-light SVG, perfect for web or print.
0 = dark, 255 = bright. Adjust until the logo is crisp.
About Mono Vectorize
Potrace is Peter Selinger's legendary black-and-white tracer (2001-present), embedded in Inkscape, LibreOffice Draw, and dozens of other tools. Its strengths: naturally smooth Bezier curves, extremely light output paths, and a very fast algorithm.
We preprocess images with Sharp: grayscale, threshold (to the level you choose), convert to PNM. Then Potrace traces the paths and SVGO optimizes. For simple logos the result is typically 2-20KB.
- Potrace Bezier smoothing
- Real-time threshold slider 0-255
- Turdsize to drop noise
- Alphamax to tune curvature
- Automatic SVGO multipass
- Ultra-light output: 2-20KB for logos
How to vectorize a B&W logo
- 1
Prepare the input
A logo or icon with clear contrast. The higher the contrast, the cleaner the trace. PNG, JPG, WebP supported.
- 2
Upload the file
Drop into the upload area. Images over 2048px are resized first.
- 3
Tweak threshold
Default is 128. Logos on dark backgrounds want lower (80-100), bright backgrounds want higher (150-180).
- 4
Click start
Sharp + Potrace + SVGO run in sequence. Usually under 5s for a simple logo.
- 5
Preview and download
The final SVG is a few KB. Copy to your code or use directly.
When to use Mono Vectorize?
Pure Potrace SVG vs fake base64 SVG
A 500×500px single-color logo converted with OneSVG Mono vs tools that wrap the raster in base64.
| Criterion | Pure SVG (OneSVG Potrace) | Fake SVG (base64) |
|---|---|---|
| Root element | 1-2 <path> tags with Bezier curves | <image href="data:image/png;base64,..."> |
| File size for a 500×500 logo | 2-20 KB | 30-200 KB (10× heavier) |
| Logo curve rendering | Naturally smooth Bezier | Visible jaggies on zoom |
| Use as an SVG favicon | ✅ Perfect | ❌ Too heavy |
| Laser / CNC engraving | ✅ Machine reads paths directly | ❌ Unusable |
| T-shirt / screen printing | ✅ Sharp at any size | ❌ Needs a high-res source |
| Recolor via CSS | ✅ fill="currentColor" works | ❌ Fixed |
How does Potrace work?
Potrace is Peter Selinger's black-and-white tracer (2001-present), used by Inkscape, GIMP, LibreOffice Draw, and many Adobe workflows. Pipeline: 1-bit bitmap → path tracing (Marching Squares-like) → polygon reduction → Bezier smoothing.
Before Potrace we preprocess the input with Sharp: grayscale → threshold (the 0-255 level you pick) → 1-bit bitmap → PBM file (Sharp can't emit PBM directly, so ImageMagick's convert bridges the gap). The turdsize parameter drops regions under N pixels² to clean up noise.
Alphamax (default 1.0) controls curvature: 0 yields straight polygons, 1.3334 is very smooth. Opttolerance (default 0.2) governs path merging — the quality/size trade-off. Finally, SVGO optimizes; output is typically 2-20 KB.
Mono Vectorize FAQ
Can I trace color images?
What threshold should I use for a logo?
What is Turdsize?
Why does my output have holes inside the logo?
Related tools
Color Vectorize (VTracer)
Convert color PNG/JPG to pure SVG with the VTracer algorithm — preserves gradients and fine detail.
SVG Optimizer (SVGO)
Shrink existing SVG files by up to 70% with zero visual loss: strip metadata, round coordinates, merge paths.
Batch Convert
Upload many images at once, pick a single engine (color or mono), download them all as a ZIP of SVGs.