Image Trace in Illustrator: every setting explained

Short answer

Select your image in Illustrator, open Window > Image Trace, pick a preset (Black and White Logo or 3 or 6 Colors for most logos), turn on Preview, adjust Paths, Corners and Noise, then click Trace and Object > Image Trace > Expand. For blurry or detailed logos, redraw by hand instead.

Image Trace is Adobe Illustrator’s built-in tool for turning a raster image, like a PNG or JPG logo, into editable vector paths. It is fast and free if you already have Illustrator, but the defaults rarely give a clean result. This guide explains every setting, so you know what to change and why.

How to use Image Trace in Illustrator

Place the image with File > Place and select it.
Open Window > Image Trace.
Choose a Preset and tick Preview so you see changes live.
Adjust the settings below until the shapes look right.
Click Trace, then go to Object > Image Trace > Expand to turn the result into editable paths.
Ungroup, delete leftover background shapes and clean up the paths.

Image Trace presets

Preset	What it does	Use it for
Black and White Logo	Two colors, smooth shapes	One-color logos, icons and signatures
3 Colors / 6 Colors / 16 Colors	Limits the palette to that many colors	Flat color logos; pick the number closest to your logo
Silhouettes	Solid black shapes	Simple shapes and cut files
Line Art / Technical Drawing	Traces lines as strokes	Sketches, outlines and drawings
Sketched Art	Black fills from hand drawings	Scanned pencil or ink artwork
Shades of Gray	Grayscale tones	Black and white illustrations
High / Low Fidelity Photo	Many colors, very detailed	Artistic photo effects, not logos

Main settings

View switches between the tracing result, outlines and the source image. Use Outlines with Source Image to compare paths with the original.
Mode is Color, Grayscale or Black and White.
Palette (Color mode) controls where colors come from: Limited, Full Tone, Automatic or a Document Library, which lets you trace using your exact brand swatches.
Colors sets how many colors the trace may use. Fewer colors give cleaner shapes.
Threshold (Black and White mode) decides which pixels become black. Raise it if thin parts disappear, lower it if shapes bleed together.

Advanced settings

Setting	What it controls	Tip for logos
Paths	How closely paths follow the pixels	Lower for smoother curves, higher for more detail
Corners	How many sharp corners are created	Lower for round logos, higher for geometric ones
Noise	Ignores areas smaller than this many pixels	Raise it to remove specks from scans and JPG artifacts
Method	Abutting (shapes cut out of each other) or Overlapping (stacked shapes)	Abutting is easier to recolor; Overlapping avoids tiny gaps
Fills / Strokes	Create filled shapes, strokes, or both	Fills for most logos, strokes for line art
Snap Curves to Lines	Turns slightly curved lines into straight ones	Turn on for geometric logos
Ignore White	Drops white areas instead of tracing them	Turn on so you do not get a white box behind the logo

Best Image Trace settings for logos

Start with these and adjust while Preview is on:

Preset: Black and White Logo, or 3 Colors or 6 Colors for color logos
Paths: around 50 to 70%, Corners: around 25 to 50%, Noise: 10 to 25 px for clean files
Method: Abutting, Fills on, Ignore White on
Snap Curves to Lines on for geometric marks

From the studio: Image Trace gets a clean, high-contrast logo about 80% of the way. Text and smooth curves are where it fails, so we retype text in the right font and redraw key curves with the Pen tool.

Clean up after tracing

Expand the trace and ungroup it.
Use Object > Path > Simplify to reduce anchor points.
Merge same-color shapes with the Shape Builder tool or Pathfinder.
Replace traced text with real type, then outline it.
Check the result in Outline view (Ctrl+Y or Cmd+Y).

When Image Trace does not work

Blurry, small or heavily compressed images, gradients, photos of signs and thin script lettering all trace badly. In those cases redrawing by hand is faster than fixing a messy trace. We compare all methods in how to vectorize a logo.