PNG to DXF converter
A cutting machine does not read pictures. A laser controller, a plasma table or a CAD assembly needs geometry: coordinates, closed boundaries, entities it can offset into a toolpath. A PNG is a grid of coloured squares with none of that. This converter reads the grid, finds the boundary between one colour and the next, and rebuilds it as drawing geometry — an LWPOLYLINE where the edge runs straight, an open degree-3 SPLINE where it curves. No IMAGE entity is written, so nothing arrives as a snapshot inside a CAD wrapper.
The file is DXF R2010 (AC1024), so it opens directly in AutoCAD 2010 and later, Fusion 360, LightBurn, Inkscape and FreeCAD. Each traced colour becomes its own layer, named FILL_ plus that colour's hex value — that is how you separate cut from engrave in your machine's software. No HATCH is ever written, so the drawing is pure contour: what a toolpath consumes, and worth knowing if you expected shaded areas.
Free and watermark-free. Preview the traced outline first; a free Google sign-in then releases the DXF download. Inputs are PNG, JPEG and WEBP, one image at a time.
Drop an image here
or click to choose one
How it works
- Upload your PNG. High-contrast artwork on a plain background traces cleanest; fully transparent areas are treated as outside the canvas and stay empty in the drawing.
- Set colours to 2 for a single cutting contour, or 4 to 8 when you want separate engrave and cut layers. Leave shape stacking on Cut-outs so holes stay holes.
- Type the finished width and height in millimetres if the part has a known size — that field is carried into the DXF.
- Check the preview, then sign in with Google to download the DXF.
- Import it into LightBurn, Fusion 360, FreeCAD or AutoCAD — the drawing declares millimetres, so it should arrive at size.
Who this is for
PNG to DXF is a workshop errand, not a design-studio one. The people searching for it cut acrylic on a diode laser, burn steel on a plasma table, pocket signs on a router, quote sheet-metal parts, or drag a logo that arrived as a screenshot back into CAD to be dimensioned.
What breaks those jobs is dull, mechanical stuff: a boundary that never closes, so the controller skips it; duplicate edges that cut the same line twice and scorch it; a scale nobody can vouch for. Two failure modes are common enough to name. Some converters wrap the bitmap in a DXF IMAGE entity — the file opens, the picture appears, and there is nothing to cut. Others emit tens of thousands of two-point segments, which import fine but make a cutting head stutter. This tracer fits long polyline runs and cubic curves instead, so the contour in the preview is the contour the machine follows.
Settings we suggest
Colours: 2. A cut file wants one boundary between shape and background, and two colours produces exactly that — a single closed contour per island, one layer in the DXF. Raise the count only for extra layers: 4 to 8 colours lets a controller burn mid-tones in one operation and cut the silhouette in another. Higher counts also split the soft anti-aliased ring around a PNG edge into its own colour, the usual cause of doubled cut lines. There is no manual edge control here; the colour count is the control.
Shape stacking: Cut-outs. Holes are subtracted from the shape around them, so the middle of a letter O arrives as an inner boundary inside an outer one, not a disc with a second disc on top. Stacked suits layered artwork, not cutting. Two other axes do nothing for you here: draw style only changes SVG, PDF and EPS output, and layer grouping only rearranges SVG groups — the DXF is always outline geometry, one layer per colour.
Size: type the finished width and height in millimetres. That field does reach the DXF and is the only way to be certain of physical dimensions. Left blank, coordinates fall back to a fixed conversion — 96 px = 25.4 mm, so 1 px is about 0.26 mm and a 512 px wide PNG lands near 135 mm. Images over 1.5 megapixels are downscaled first, so that fallback follows the reduced pixel count, not your original file.
Questions
Is the DXF real geometry, or a bitmap in a DXF wrapper?
Real geometry. The writer emits LWPOLYLINE entities for straight runs and open degree-3 SPLINE entities for curves; there is no IMAGE entity in the file. Every vertex and control point stays editable, so you can offset for kerf, trim or dimension the outline.
Which programs open it, and which DXF version is written?
It is DXF R2010, the AC1024 format, opening in AutoCAD 2010 and later, Fusion 360, LightBurn, Inkscape and FreeCAD. Colours arrive as layers named FILL_ followed by the hex value, so a two-colour trace gives one geometry layer to map onto a cut operation.
What units is the drawing in, and how do I get the right physical size?
Millimetres, and the drawing says as much: coordinates are written at millimetre scale, 96 px = 25.4 mm, and the header sets $INSUNITS to 4, so a reader that respects it brings the file in at true size rather than defaulting to inches and overshooting by 25.4. Better still, enter width and height in millimetres before converting: that setting is applied to the DXF, so a 120 mm part is written 120 mm wide.
Why did my cut path come out as two lines around every shape?
Anti-aliased edges. Your PNG has a one or two pixel ramp of in-between colour along every boundary; at a high colour count that ramp becomes a thin region of its own, with an inner and an outer edge, so the cutter sees two lines. Convert again with colours set to 2 and shape stacking on Cut-outs.
Why is nothing filled in my DXF, and what happens to transparency?
By design: no HATCH is written, so the drawing holds outlines only — filled regions mean nothing to a cutting head. If you want a filled version too, tick SVG or PDF in the same conversion. Transparent pixels count as outside the canvas and stay empty; semi-transparent ones are composited over white before tracing.
What are the limits, and how long does a conversion take?
One image per conversion, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels; images above 1.5 megapixels are downscaled before tracing. Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; fine-line or noisy images take longer, and a conversion that does not finish within 60 seconds stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image. Anonymous visitors get 10 conversions per hour, signed-in users 60 per hour and 300 per day. Download links expire after 1 hour; uploads and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule.