Presets and settings
The Trace tab. A preset is a starting point: it picks the tracer and sensible defaults, and every setting can be changed afterwards. Changing anything re-traces within about 120 ms of the last change.
Presets
Section titled “Presets”| Preset | For | Tracer | Defaults |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logo | Few flat colours, crisp corners | Inlay | 8 colours, specks 8 px, smoothing 1.5, corners 45° |
| Illustration | More colours, smooth curves | Inlay | 16 colours, specks 4 px, smoothing 1, corners 60° |
| Line art | Ink drawings and scans, one colour | Inlay | Threshold 128, specks 6 px, smoothing 1.5, corners 45° |
| Poster | Photos flattened into colour bands | Inlay (quantized palette) | 24 colours, specks 8 px, smoothing 1, corners 90°, stacked |
| Pixel art | Hard edges, nothing smoothed | Inlay (pixel staircase) | Its exact colours (up to 32), no speck filter, up to 4096 px |
Settings
Section titled “Settings”Colours (2–64): the cap on palette colours. Fewer means a smaller file. Set it a little above the number of colours you see: anti-aliased edge shades compete for slots, and with too low a cap two real colours merge into one.
Ink is (Line art): Dark on light or Light on dark. Line art keeps one side and makes the rest transparent; Light on dark inverts first. It’s chosen automatically when the image’s border is dark, which turns a white logo on black into black shapes on transparent in one step.
Ink threshold (Line art, 1–254): which grey counts as ink. Adapt to uneven lighting compares each pixel with its surroundings instead, for photos of paper.
Ignore specks (0–32 px): regions smaller than this many pixels squared merge into their surroundings. Raise it for noisy scans or JPEG speckle.
Smoothing (0–3): how loosely the outline is followed. It sets the fitting tolerance: 0.25 + 0.5 × smoothing px, so the Logo default of 1.5 is 1 px, and the slider shows that tolerance (±1.00 px). Higher means fewer nodes and a smaller file.
Corners (0–180°): bends sharper than this stay corners; gentler ones become curves. See Curve fitting for how a corner is told apart from a tight curve.
Shapes (Poster only): Stacked draws each shape whole, larger shapes first, so smaller ones sit on top: a little less path data, and no hairline seams where shapes meet. Cut out gives every shape holes where others sit, so none overlaps (for vinyl and screen print layers). Both look the same, and both share every edge exactly. The flat-art presets are always cut out.
Small and large images
Section titled “Small and large images”Images under 512 px are upscaled to 1024 px before tracing, and images over 2048 px are traced at 2048 px. The panel says when it happens. See The pipeline.
Changing settings after editing
Section titled “Changing settings after editing”Colour edits survive a re-trace. Shape edits (nodes, deletes, mirror) can’t, so once you’ve made one, changing a trace setting asks first. See Undo and the edit model.