Vectorizely is a small set of focused tools for converting between raster images and vectors — tracing PNGs and JPGs into clean SVGs, vectorizing logos, and rendering SVGs back to PNG. The guiding idea is simple: the conversion should happen on your device, not on someone else's server.
Why in-browser
Almost every online converter uploads your file, processes it remotely, and sends it back. For a quick meme that is fine; for an unreleased logo, a client's brand asset, or anything confidential, it means trusting a stranger's servers and retention policy. Vectorizely runs the tracing and rendering locally in your browser, so your image never leaves your machine. That is faster (no upload round-trip), works offline, and keeps private work private.
Why free
Because the work runs on your device, there are no per-conversion server costs to recover — so there is no paywall, no watermark, and no “create an account to download.” The tools are genuinely free to use as much as you like.
How the tracing works
Before anything is traced, Vectorizely works out the real colors in your image and snaps every pixel to one of them, so the blurred edge pixels and JPEG noise that other tracers turn into specks and halos simply disappear. The clean result is then traced into curves by VTracer, an open-source engine by Vision Cortex, compiled to WebAssembly so it runs in your browser. Shapes are stacked rather than cut out of each other, which is why the output has no hairline gaps between colors. Soft shadows and glows in a transparent image are traced on their own, as a stack of see-through shapes under everything else, so a drop shadow stays soft instead of turning into a hard dark edge. Black-and-white mode uses a tracer of our own instead: it finds each ink outline straight from the grayscale image, so edges land between pixels rather than on them, and fits smooth curves to it. Open-source notices are in third-party-licenses.txt.
What we're honest about
Tracing is excellent for logos, icons, line art, and flat illustrations. It is the wrong tool for photographs and smooth gradients, which only approximate into heavy, posterized vectors. When that is the case, we say so — the goal is to get you the right result, not to push every image through the same pipe.