Decaly

Photo to SVG: which photos make a good cut file

A photo can be traced like any picture, but a cutting machine cuts flat colours, not shading. Whether the result is good depends far more on the photo than on the tracer.

Written by the developer of Decaly · Published 21 October 2026

Short answer

Converting a photo to SVG for a cutting machine means reducing it to a few flat colours and tracing each into shapes. Photos of a clear subject on a plain background, in even light, trace well: a drawing on paper, a logo on a sign, a pet against a wall. Busy scenes, soft shading and faces in detail turn into blotchy bands. Use 2 to 4 colours, Simple detail, and crop to the subject.

Get Decaly Traces a picture into cut layers on your Android phone. Tracing is free, with no account.

What happens to a photo when it is traced

A photo has thousands of colours and smooth shading. A cut file has a few colours, each a sheet of vinyl. So a tracer first reduces the photo to a handful of flat colours (posterizing), then draws outlines around each one. Shading becomes stepped bands; texture becomes specks. That is not a fault of the tracer: it is what “cut from 3 colours of vinyl” looks like.

Decaly lets you choose 1 to 7 colours and shows the result as you change it, so you can judge the bands before anything is saved. A busy photo takes a few seconds longer to trace than clip art.

Photos that trace well

  • A drawing on paper: a kid’s drawing, a sketch, hand lettering. The paper becomes the background and the lines become the design. A faint pencil drawing has its contrast raised automatically before tracing, so light lines still register.
  • A logo or sign photographed straight on.
  • A silhouette: a pet, a plant or a person against a bright, plain background, traced to one or two colours.

Photos that don’t

  • Busy backgrounds: the tracer can’t tell subject from scenery, and you get pieces everywhere.
  • Soft light and gradients: skies, skin and shadows turn into bands that are hard to weed.
  • Small subjects in a big frame: crop first, or the subject ends up a few hundred pixels across (why low-resolution images cut blocky).

How to photograph a drawing for cutting

  1. Lay it flat in daylight or even room light, with no shadow of your phone across it.
  2. Shoot straight down and fill the frame with the drawing. Decaly’s camera button opens your camera app and takes the photo straight into the trace, upright.
  3. Go over pencil with a dark marker if you can; a bolder line traces into a sturdier piece.
  4. Trace with 1 or 2 colours and Simple detail, then check thin strokes at your cut size (how thin a blade can cut).

Making the most of a photo trace

  • Start with 2 colours and add one at a time; stop when a new colour adds bands instead of detail.
  • Use Leave this colour out for a colour you don’t want to cut, such as a shadow; its pieces take the colour around them.
  • If the trace comes out as one dark block, see why an SVG comes out all black.

When the trace looks right, save it for your machine: an SVG for Cricut Design Space, DXFs for Silhouette Studio, or a PNG for Print Then Cut, as in how to convert an image to SVG on Android.

Decaly: image to SVG, in layers you can cut

Open a picture on your Android phone and watch it trace into colour layers, free. Decaly Pro saves it as an SVG for Cricut Design Space, one DXF per layer for Silhouette Studio, or a PNG for Print Then Cut.

Get Decaly on Google Play