Decaly

Image to SVG, traced into layers you can cut

Decaly splits a picture on your Android phone into colour layers your cutting machine can cut, and saves them the way your machine’s app wants them: one SVG for Cricut Design Space, one DXF per layer for Silhouette Studio, or a 300 dpi PNG for Print Then Cut.

Get it on Google Play

Tracing is free, at full quality, as often as you like. Saving the cut file is Decaly Pro.

Nothing is uploaded. No account.

A cartoon whale traced into two blue layers on white
Sky Bluebottom · cut whole
Royal Blueon top
A clip-art whale traced into two layers, shown the way the app shows them: the picture on a white canvas, one tile per colour.

From a picture to a cut file in three steps

No upload and no waiting on a server: the tracing runs on your phone, and you see the result change as you adjust it.

  1. 01

    Open your picture

    PNG, JPG, WebP or HEIC from the photo picker, or take a photo of a drawing with the camera. You can also share an image to Decaly from Files, Drive or any app, or choose Decaly under “Open with”.

  2. 02

    Watch it trace

    Choose 1 to 7 colours and Simple, Balanced or Fine detail. A magnifier shows any edge at 4×. Tap a colour to recolour it to the vinyl you’ll cut it from, or leave it out.

  3. 03

    Save for your machine

    Pick Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio or Print Then Cut, check the size you’ll cut, and save the file or share it. Saving is part of Decaly Pro.

Stacked or side by side

Layered vinyl can be cut two ways, and the right one depends on what you’re making. Decaly cuts both from the same trace; one switch changes it.

The bottom layer: the whole whale in one light blue piece
bottom layer
The top layer: the dark blue eye, mouth, belly and spout
on top

Stacked

The bottom colour is cut whole, and the others sit on top of it. Best for layered vinyl and iron-on, where a small overlap hides the seams.

The light blue layer with holes where the dark blue parts go
light blue, with holes
The dark blue pieces that fill those holes
dark blue, fills them

Side by side

Each colour is cut only where it shows, so the pieces meet edge to edge and use less vinyl. Good for flat layers that shouldn’t build up.

Checked for the blade, not just for the screen

  • Too thin to weed, markedA piece narrower than 0.8 mm at your cut size is ringed on the picture. One tap makes it thicker, to the 0.8 mm a blade can cut, or removes it.
  • Specks removed firstBits under 2 mm across are cleaned away before you see the trace. It is a switch, on by default, in the size sheet.
  • The size you’ll actually cutSet the long side from 0.5 to 24 inches, or 1.2 to 61 cm; the other side follows the picture. The SVG and the DXFs are written at that size, in inches, and the PNG at 300 dpi for it.
  • Honest about small picturesA picture under 300 pixels on its long side is refused, with the reason: every curve would be a staircase the blade cuts step by step. From about 600 pixels wide, curves come out smooth.
Decaly’s trace screen: the whale traced into three colours, with a ruler, a magnifier and a tile for each colour
The trace screen, from the app’s release build.

One trace, three kinds of file

The export is named for where the file is going, not for its format. The file names come from your picture’s name and the colour names.

  • Cricut Design Spacewhale.svgOne SVG with every layer, grouped by colour, at the size you set.
  • Silhouette Studiowhale-sky-blue.dxf · whale-royal-blue.dxfOne DXF file for each layer, made for Silhouette Studio. Studio’s free Basic edition doesn’t open SVG, which is why the DXFs are there.
  • Print Then Cutwhale.pngA transparent PNG at 300 dpi, for printing; Design Space draws the cut line around it. If the design is bigger than Design Space’s 6.75 × 9.25 in Print Then Cut area, Decaly says so before you save.

Any program that opens SVG can use the SVG too. Decaly makes files; it doesn’t drive your machine, so the cut itself happens in your machine’s own app.

Decaly’s save screen with Cricut Design Space chosen: whale.svg, all 3 layers in one file, grouped by colour
Saving a three-colour trace of the whale for Cricut Design Space.

Free to trace. Pro to save.

Free

Open, trace, recolour and preview at full quality, with no limit on pictures. Try it on your own pictures before you pay anything.

Decaly Pro PRO

Save cut files for Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio and Print Then Cut, as many as you make, and keep each design in My cut files with its layers and size, ready to save again at another size or for another machine.

Decaly Pro is a weekly or yearly subscription. Google Play shows the price in your currency before you subscribe, and you cancel in Google Play.

On a tablet, the picture gets the room

On a tablet in landscape the controls sit in a column beside a large canvas, so you can judge every edge while you change the colours.

Decaly on a tablet in landscape: controls on the left, the traced whale large on the right

What Decaly doesn’t do

  • It doesn’t edit nodes or draw vectors by hand. If you need a pen tool, a desktop vector editor is the right tool.
  • It doesn’t send anything to your cutting machine. You open the saved file in Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio or another program, and cut from there.
  • It has no library of ready-made designs and doesn’t generate pictures. It traces the picture you bring.
  • It traces flat-colour pictures best: clip art, lettering, logos, drawings. A photo is reduced to a few flat colours, not reproduced.

Guides

Plain answers to the questions that come up between a picture and a clean cut, written by the developer of Decaly.

All guides →

Bring a picture. See it in layers.

Open one of your own pictures and watch it trace, free. When it looks right, Decaly Pro saves it for your machine.

Get it on Google Play