PNG to DXF converter

Drop a PNG into the box above and it comes back as a DXF drawing. The picture is traced into outlines, each outline becomes a closed polyline, and the drawing is scaled to the width you type, in millimeters or inches. Import it into laser software, a CNC program or a CAD app to cut, engrave or draw along the lines. There is no signup or watermark.

Which images convert well

• Logos and icons on a plain or transparent background. One color gives the outline of the whole design.
• Silhouettes and shapes, for a single clean line to cut along.
• Line art, text and signatures. Black & white traces the ink.

Photos can be traced too, but only as a stencil of their darker areas. To cut out the shape of a person, pet or product in a photo, remove the background first, then trace the transparent PNG in One color: the outline follows the subject.

One color, black and white, or color

• One color turns every visible part of the picture into one solid shape and traces its edge: the line to cut the design out along. Holes in letters and shapes stay open. It is selected first for logos and drawings.
• Black & white traces only the dark parts, the classic way to vectorize line art, text and scanned drawings, and is selected first for photos. Even out uneven lighting helps with photos of paper that are brighter on one side.
• Color traces each color as its own shapes and puts them on their own layer, named after the color (for example COLOR_1E90FF), so a laser program can give each color its own settings. The colors are stacked like sheets of paper, each lower one running under the ones above, so use One color for a single cut line.

Remove the background color, on when the picture sits on one plain color, clears that color from the edges inward before tracing, so the drawing holds the design and not a rectangle around it.

Width and units

Type the width the drawing should have and choose millimeters or inches; the height follows the picture's proportions and shows under the field. Switching units keeps the same physical size. The DXF stores its coordinates in that unit, says which one in its header and puts the picture's bottom-left corner at 0,0. If a program asks for the unit on import, choose the same one.

What's inside the DXF

• An ASCII DXF in the R12 layout, the simplest version of the format.
• One closed polyline for each outline; holes are outlines of their own.
• Curves as chains of short straight segments, within a fifth of a traced pixel of the curve.
• One layer for each traced color, named after it and drawn in the nearest standard CAD color.

The Simple level smooths small wiggles and drops specks, Balanced suits most logos, and Detailed keeps small features. Under More settings, Sharp corners keeps straight edges and corners for mechanical shapes, and Ignore specks smaller than removes dust and noise that would otherwise become tiny outlines to cut.

Using the DXF

• Laser cutting and engraving. LightBurn lists DXF among the files it imports. Check the size after importing, then give each layer its cut or engrave settings.
• Cricut. Cricut Design Space for Windows and Mac uploads DXF files as cut-ready vector images and separates them into layers. It takes SVG files too, which the PNG to SVG converter makes with more options for color.
• CAD. DXF is the drawing exchange format Autodesk created for AutoCAD. Bring the file into a CAD program to use the outline as a sketch to extrude, pocket or dimension.

Every result is made from the same trace as the SVG, so Download SVG gives you the matching vector file for design apps and the web.