Vectorize an Image in Figma Free in Seconds: One Editable Path Set per Colour

Get Tracepen on Figma Community →

Tracepen is an image to vector plugin for Figma: it converts a raster picture — a file you open, or the layer already selected on your canvas — into editable vector paths, one path per colour, without leaving Figma. The tracer is deterministic: no AI, no randomness, the same picture with the same settings produces the same curves every time, and the conversion happens on your machine. Free to use with every feature and a few exports a day with a free 3dshouse account; that daily count is shared with the web app, the SketchUp extension and the Blender add-on.

• Real vector nodes, not a placed picture: the result arrives as a frame of vector paths you can push around with the node tool.
• Use selection: vectorize what is already on the canvas — the one thing an export format can never do for you.
• One path per colour, with its holes cut out of that same path, and Bezier curve segments you can grab with the node tool instead of thousands of tiny straight steps.
• Four knobs that matter: colour count, noise filter, smallest region kept, corner roundness.
• Converting is unmetered — retrace as often as you like; only placing a result on the canvas counts as an export.
• Published free on Figma Community under the Community Free Resource License.

What it does in Figma

The panel opens at a fixed 480 x 720 px and holds the same interface as the web app: file picker, crop, the four sliders, a colour-layer list, and one button. When you press Add to design, the plugin hands the finished vector data to Figma’s own SVG importer, which is why the trace lands as a frame of vector paths rather than a bitmap pinned to the board. Every path is live geometry: boolean it, round its corners, recolour it, feed it to a component.

The plugin runs in Figma Design files. Network access is limited to two addresses in the manifest: 3dshouse.com for sign-in and the free-quota check, and tracepen.3dshouse.com for the sample images on the first-run strip. Your picture is traced inside the plugin panel, and none of those requests carries it.

Why “Use selection” is the point

I shipped the web app first, and SVG already imports into Figma cleanly. So a plugin only earns its place if it does something the file round trip cannot: read the canvas. Press Use selection and the plugin asks Figma to export the first selected node as a PNG — any node, so a photo, a frame, a group, a flattened sketch — then feeds that straight into the tracer as if you had opened it from disk. Select nothing, or select something Figma refuses to export, and the panel says so instead of failing quietly. Of all the hosts Tracepen runs in, Figma is the only one that can pass the selection over, so this button exists nowhere else.

How to trace an image in Figma

1. In a Figma Design file, run Plugins → Tracepen.
2. Sign in. The plugin opens a browser tab for the 3dshouse sign-in and waits for it — up to ten minutes — then picks the session up by itself. A free account is required before the tool unlocks.
3. Open an image file (or click a sample), or select a layer on the canvas and press Use selection.
4. On open, the picture is analysed: Color number is pre-set to the palette actually found in it, and the Logo or Photo mode is picked to match.
5. Crop if you only want part of the picture: press Crop, drag a box over the canvas, and everything from that point on works on that area alone — far cheaper than tracing a whole screenshot to lift one icon out of it. Cancel Crop backs out.
6. Tune. Noise filter cleans up edge speckle (0 is off). Merge min area drops colour regions below that pixel count. Corner smooth runs from sharp corners to fully round. Line thickness and Line color add an outline.
7. Press Convert. The button counts steps while it works and finishes with the number of colours it produced.
8. Check the Color Layers list, recolour a swatch or untick a layer you do not want — unticked layers are left out of the output.
9. Press Add to design.

What lands on the canvas

Each visible colour becomes exactly one path that carries every outer contour and has its holes cut out of that same shape, so a letter O stays a letter O instead of two stacked shapes. The frame is named after the source file, centred on your current viewport and left selected, ready to drag or group. Layers are ordered largest area first, then by colour proximity, so neighbouring rows in the list look like neighbours.

Two details worth knowing, because they prevent the usual tracer complaints. Adjacent flat colours meet without the hairline seams a tracer normally leaves between them, and there is nothing to set for it. And raising Merge min area clears specks away without ever dropping a colour completely, so a 1 px black outline survives instead of quietly vanishing. Set Color number to 1 and you get a flat silhouette of the subject, which is the fastest route to a mask or a sticker cut line.

Formats: what Figma gets, and what the web app gets

Inside a design tool the output is vector nodes, so there is no file menu here — Add to design replaces it. Open the same picture in the Tracepen web vectorizer and the identical trace saves as SVG, PNG, PDF or one of three DXF flavours. All three DXF files put each colour on its own DXF layer carrying that colour as a true colour, which is the part that matters for a machine: your cutter or laser can be given a different setting per colour instead of one setting for the whole file.

• DXF Lines — each region as a closed outline: cutting on a Cricut, a Silhouette, LightBurn in cut mode, or a CNC router.
• DXF Hatch — solid filled regions: LightBurn fill/scan engraving, and an import that looks right in AutoCAD.
• DXF Faces — triangulated faces, so the file arrives in SketchUp as real filled faces rather than loose edges. (The SketchUp extension skips the file entirely and builds those faces in the model.)

Tracepen, Figma’s Vectorize and other tracing plugins

Figma has its own Vectorize since February 2026, an AI feature for Full seats on paid plans with AI enabled. Tracepen is for everyone else, and for anyone who wants the same paths from the same image every time and colours that come out as one layer each. For a side-by-side of Vectorize and eleven tracing plugins (colour support, whether the image leaves Figma, price), read Figma image to vector plugins compared.

What sets Tracepen’s tracer apart is how it treats colour. It is built to handle a colour image of any kind, and it is exact on flat-colour graphics such as logos and pictures made of flat colour areas. That is a different job from a one-colour tracer (the Potrace-based plugins, for example), which traces a single colour, and from an AI vectoriser, which redraws the picture so the result is not accurate to the source. Tracepen’s output is deterministic, so you can lay the trace over the original and check it.

Gotchas

• Selection export is capped. The PNG Figma hands over is scaled so its long side is 1500 px. A tiny thumbnail blown up on the canvas still traces as a tiny thumbnail — re-import the original file if you have it.
• Large images make you wait. The panel is busy for the whole conversion: Figma itself stays responsive, this panel does not. A logo, an icon or a flat illustration is the size the tool is built for; a full photograph takes its time.
• Add to design is the metered action, exactly like a file download elsewhere. The check runs before the node is built, so a denied add places nothing.
• No download menu here. Inside a design host the panel replaces it with Add to design. For SVG, PNG, PDF or the three DXF flavours, open the same trace in the web app.
• Anti-aliasing inflates colour counts. A “two-colour” screenshot carries in-between shades along every edge. Lower the colour count or raise the minimum region size.
• Sign-in is per place. Browser storage is unavailable to a plugin iframe, so the session is kept in Figma’s own plugin storage — signing in on the web app does not sign you in here.

The free plan

The free plan is not a crippled demo: every feature, full colour, every export format, every surface. The only limit is a few finished exports a day per account, and that count is shared across the web app, SketchUp, Blender and this plugin, because they all meter against the same account. Tracing and retracing are free and unlimited, so you can iterate on settings as long as you like and spend an export only when you are happy. The Blender add-on is the exception, and worth knowing about: there the trace itself is the metered step, because nothing is exported — the geometry lands in your scene.

How this compares with the desktop vectorizers people reach for instead — Illustrator’s Image Trace, CorelDRAW PowerTRACE, Vector Magic — is written up in one photo traced in four tools.

Other surfaces

• Tracepen web app — the full tool in a browser, with every export format.
• Tracepen for SketchUp — builds native faces and groups straight in the model.
• Tracepen for Blender — meshes or editable Bezier curves, one object per colour.

Install

Get Tracepen on Figma Community →

1. Open the Community page and open the plugin in Figma from there.
2. In a Figma Design file, run Plugins → Tracepen.
3. Sign in with a free 3dshouse account in the browser tab that opens, then return to the panel.

Requirements

• A Figma account and a Figma Design file.
• A free 3dshouse account for sign-in and the daily export count.
• Figma desktop app or browser; the plugin runs inside Figma, nothing to install locally.