Make an SVG for Cricut or Silhouette in five steps

  1. Upload the largest, cleanest PNG or JPG you have, up to 2048 px on the long side (larger images are scaled down to that before tracing). Transparent PNGs are ideal.
  2. Choose the Cricut / Vinyl preset and set the colors to the number of vinyl colors you will cut: 2, the lowest setting, for a one-color decal.
  3. Keep Smooth curves on and Remove background on. Cutters follow curves better than staircases, and a removed backdrop does not become a giant rectangle to cut. Turn removal off only if the backdrop is part of the design.
  4. Check the free watermarked preview and re-trace until the shapes match what you will cut: no stray specks, thin strokes either wide enough or gone, and only the colors you intend to cut in the palette.
  5. Unlock the clean SVG (1 credit; 3 free credits with an account), download it and import it into Design Space or Silhouette Studio.

What the Cricut / Vinyl preset does

A blade cannot cut, and nobody can weed, a sliver that is thinner than about half a millimeter. The Cricut / Vinyl preset therefore does three things the other presets do not:

  • It starts at 4 colors with Remove background on, so the backdrop does not become a giant rectangle to cut. You can change both before converting.
  • It sets a minimum feature width of 0.4 % of the image's longer side, and never less than 1.5 pixels: 4 pixels on a 1000-pixel image, 8 pixels on a 2048-pixel one. That is about 0.6 mm when the design is cut 150 mm wide. Every part of a color — and every gap between shapes — that is narrower than this is merged into the neighboring color: hairlines and thin outlines disappear, slits between letters close, needle-sharp tips are trimmed back to where they are wide enough.
  • It removes specks smaller than a dot twice that width, again by merging them into their surroundings.

Everything else — the palette clean-up, the curve fitting, the closed outlines — is the same as the Standard preset. Expect thin outlines and small text to fill in or vanish: that is the preset doing its job, and the preview is drawn from the same paths you will download. If you need a thin detail, it is too thin to cut at the size the preset assumes; scale the design up, thicken the detail in the source, or use Standard.

Tidy up in the SVG editor

Open the unlocked result in the SVG editor (it needs an account; there is no extra credit for an unlocked result):

  • Delete any shape you will not cut.
  • Merge colors that will be cut from the same material by recoloring them to one fill; that tells you visually which layer they belong to.
  • Save the SVG. If you want a smaller file, run it through the optimizer at a moderate precision; aggressive rounding can shift fine details, so check the result.

Import into Cricut Design Space

  1. In Design Space, choose Upload, open the .svg file you downloaded, give it a name and upload it.
  2. Add it to your Canvas. Cricut Help describes what happens next: "Vector images designed with layers will appear on your Canvas as a grouped image. If ungrouped, the image layers can be moved and sized separately."
  3. A png2svg.art trace is grouped by object, with every shape its own path inside it (nested by what encloses what), so each object arrives as its own group. If you would rather have one layer per color, set Layers to By color in Settings before you convert.
  4. Set the final size in Design Space. The SVG's viewBox is in pixels, and Design Space decides how large that is on the mat, so size the design after upload, not before.
  5. Do Weld, Attach and any offset in Design Space. Those are cutting decisions, and the SVG does not carry them.
  6. Cut a small test piece before you commit a full sheet of vinyl.

Open in Silhouette Studio

Silhouette's support article says: "Silhouette Studio can open SVG files when using the Designer Edition or above."

  • With one of those editions, open the .svg in Studio.
  • Size it after import. Like any SVG, it arrives at a size Studio works out from its pixel dimensions, so set the width and height you will cut.
  • Cut lines, blade, force, speed and passes are machine settings. They belong to Studio, and the SVG does not carry them.

What a cutter actually needs

Cutting and plotting software works from closed vector outlines. It reads the geometry, then applies its own logic: which outline is cut, in which order, with what offset for the blade or beam, and at which size on the mat or bed. An SVG from a tracer supplies the first part only — the outlines. Everything from "offset" onward belongs to the machine's software, which is why no traced file can be called a validated toolpath.

The trace gives you one group per object (the background first) with every shape a filled <path> inside it, nested by what encloses what, every outline closed. A shape continues a little way under the shapes drawn on top of it (about one and a half pixels of your image), and a shape that holds others is drawn solid underneath them rather than with a hole. That maps naturally onto layered vinyl — one color per layer, each layer slightly overlapping the next so no gaps show — and onto single-line cuts once the software converts fills to outlines. Holes in a shape, such as the inside of an "O", are drawn in the opposite direction to the outline around them, so they stay open whichever fill rule your software applies.

Checks that catch most problems

  • Open the SVG in a browser at 400 %: any wobble you see will be cut.
  • Count the colors: the editor lists the file's colors as swatches, and each object in its layer list holds that object's shapes. Delete any object or color you do not want to cut.
  • Text: if it came from a small raster, retype it with a font in your cutting software or a vector editor, and place it over the traced design.
  • Thin bridges (the part of a stencil that holds an island in place) must be wider than your blade or beam needs; the preset removes bridges narrower than its minimum width and never adds bridges for you.

Design Space and Silhouette questions

Why does my SVG upload as one grouped image?

Design Space groups the layers of a vector upload. Ungroup it to move, size or hide the colors separately.

Why is the size different after upload?

The SVG measures in pixels, and each program maps pixels to inches or millimeters in its own way. Set the final size after import, in the program you cut from.

Can I cut each color separately?

Yes. Each color is its own path in every object, and with Layers set to By color each color is exactly one path, so after ungrouping each color is its own layer, and you can cut each one from a different material.

Does the free edition of Silhouette Studio open SVG files?

No. Silhouette says Studio opens SVG files in Designer Edition or above.

Does png2svg.art have designs to download?

No. png2svg.art converts an image you upload; it has no designs of its own. You keep only the rights you already have in that image, so upload artwork you made or have permission to use.