Make a vector PDF you can hand to a printer, a sign shop or a laser

A vector PDF is usually something somebody else asked you for: a line in the print shop's file spec, the sign maker's reply when your artwork turns up too small for a three-metre panel, the second format the laser bureau accepts next to DXF. Underneath they all want the same thing, which is artwork described as curves that their equipment can redraw at whatever scale the job turns out to need.

This page builds that file from a PNG, JPEG or WEBP of a logo, badge, stencil, label or line drawing. The tracer works the pixels into one set of shapes and the PDF writer serialises those same shapes, not a rougher second pass. You get a PDF-1.4 document with a single page, a FlateDecode-compressed content stream and cubic curve operators on every curved edge. Nothing is rasterised on the way out.

One detail worth knowing before you download is that the page can come out at a real measurement. Type a width and height in millimetres and the MediaBox is set to exactly that, converted into points: 150 mm is a 425.2 pt page, and the artwork is scaled into it rather than cropped. Leave the fields empty and the page is sized from the trace instead. The settings section below covers both routes.

How it works

1. Choose a PNG, JPEG or WEBP file: one image per conversion, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels.
2. Set the number of colours: 2 for a stencil or a single-colour engraving, 6 to 24 for a flat logo or badge.
3. Tick PDF in the output formats, and type the finished width and height into the millimetre fields when the job has a measurement to hit.
4. Look at the preview, and change the colour count if a shape merged with its neighbour or split in two.
5. Sign in with Google (free) to download the PDF.

Who this is for

Print production is the common case. A shop that receives a vector PDF drops it into an imposition and scales it to the trim size, and the edges stay as sharp as the plate or the toner allows. Because the trace produces flat colour regions, a solid logo mark or the counter inside a letter arrives as its own closed path rather than as pixels that merely look flat.

Page layout is the second destination. InDesign, Illustrator, Affinity Publisher, Scribus and Inkscape place a PDF as live vector artwork you can scale, wrap text around, or pull apart and recolour. Word and Google Docs are the weak link: they will take the PDF, but they embed it as an object and can flatten it to a fixed-resolution picture, so insert it near its final printed size and resist enlarging it later.

Laser engravers and cutters are the third. LightBurn and several other machine front-ends read PDF and treat the paths as geometry, which is a convenient hand-off when the operator has not asked for DXF: closed shapes can be engraved, open runs followed as cuts or scores.

Large-format signage is where the difference shows most. A banner or a shop fascia is often output two or three metres across. A 1200 px logo has nothing left to give at that scale, while the same logo as curves is arithmetic the RIP evaluates at the device's own resolution.

Settings we suggest

Start with the colour count, because it decides everything downstream. A flat logo or badge usually lands between 6 and 24; 2 gives the single clean black-and-white separation a stencil or an engraving pass wants. The slider runs from 2 to 64, but high numbers on a photographic source make hundreds of small shapes no prepress operator will thank you for.

Leave draw style on Fill shapes for anything printed, so regions are painted solid as the artwork reads, and switch to Stroke edges when the file goes to a machine that follows lines. Shape stacking matters too: Cut-outs writes each colour region as its own shape with the overlaps removed, while Stacked paints regions over one another. Cut-outs is the safer choice when someone downstream will separate or recolour the file.

Then physical size, which the millimetre width and height fields settle here as surely as in the SVG or the DXF. What you type becomes the MediaBox once it is converted into points, so a 500 mm panel comes out as a 1417.3 pt page, with the content scaled into the box rather than cropped to it. Do it whenever the job has a number attached — a label, an engraving bed, a panel — because the measurement then travels inside the file instead of in an email. Tick SVG, EPS or DXF alongside PDF and every file in the run is built to the same figure; the DXF states its unit in the header as well ($INSUNITS = 4, millimetres), so a CAD package that reads the header places it at size.

Left empty, those fields hand the page the traced pixel count, and images above 1.5 megapixels are downscaled before tracing: a 4000 x 3000 photo then lands on roughly a 1414 x 1061 point page, about 499 x 374 mm.

Questions

Related pages

• Convert a PNG into a PDF that is made of curves
• Convert an image into a vector EPS
• Turn the image you already have into an SVG
• Convert an image into vector shapes you can scale, edit and cut
• Rescue a rejected print-on-demand upload with a vector master
• A DXF your laser will actually cut

Updated 2026-09-15