About this tool
GIFs are where old logos, stickers, and pixel-art graphics tend to survive, and a GIF is limited to 256 colors and a fixed size. Tracing the frame you care about turns those flat color areas into shapes that scale to any size and can be recolored, which is exactly what a GIF cannot do. Few colors is an advantage here: a GIF logo usually traces into a handful of clean paths.
About the formats: GIF dates from 1987 and still rules short looping animations. It is limited to 256 colors per frame and compresses poorly compared to video, but it plays everywhere, in chat apps, forums, email, and slides, without a video player. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) stores a picture as shapes and curves rather than pixels, so it stays sharp at any size and edits cleanly in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, or a text editor. It suits logos, icons, and line art; photographs traced into SVG become thousands of flat shapes and are usually better left as JPG.
GIF and SVG, side by side
| .gif in | .svg out | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless, 256 colors | Vector, not pixels |
| Transparency | 1-bit (on or off) | Yes |
| Animation | Yes | Yes (CSS or SMIL) |
| Opens on | Everything | Browsers and design apps |
Rows where the two differ are marked. The full story on each: GIF files and SVG files.
How to use it
- Drop your GIF files into the box above, or click to browse. Nothing is uploaded.
- Adjust the options if you want; the defaults suit most files.
- Click Convert to SVG and wait a moment.
- Download the results individually or all at once as a ZIP.
Questions
What happens to an animation?
Only the first frame is traced. An SVG can hold an animation, but a traced one would need every frame redrawn as hundreds of shapes, which makes a file far larger than the original. To work with the other frames, split the animation into images first and trace the one you want.
Does this give me a real vector file?
Yes. The picture is traced: the tracer groups pixels of similar color, walks the outline of each group, and fits curves to it. What comes out is paths you can open and edit in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, or Affinity Designer, and scale to any size without blurring.
Why does my photo look like a paint-by-numbers?
Because that is what tracing a photograph does. Vector shapes cannot store a smooth gradient the way pixels do, so the tracer approximates it with many flat layers. For photos, keep the JPG; tracing suits logos, icons, line art, stencils, and cutting machine designs.
Can I get a transparent background?
Yes, from a picture that already has one (a PNG, WebP, or GIF with transparency). Those areas are detected and left empty in the SVG, so the shapes sit on nothing. A JPG, or any picture with a painted background, has its background traced as shapes instead; delete that layer in an editor, or remove the background first with our background remover.
The file is enormous. What do I change?
Lower the color detail, raise the speckle filter, and trace at 600 or 1000 px instead of full resolution. Curves make smaller files than straight lines, and far smaller than following every pixel.
What is the "wrap the picture" option?
Some upload forms and cutting programs demand a file ending in .svg but are happy with a picture inside it. That option puts your picture into an SVG container unchanged: it opens anywhere an SVG is expected, but it is still pixels, so it will not scale up cleanly or edit as shapes.
Is the image uploaded?
No. The tracer is a Rust program compiled to WebAssembly that runs in this tab, so the picture never leaves your device.
Is it free, are files uploaded, which browsers work: the general questions are answered once for the whole site.