What actually happens when you convert an image

A conversion to vector is a rebuild, not a format change

A PNG or a JPG is a grid of coloured squares. There are no shapes recorded anywhere in it, which is why enlarging one gives you bigger squares rather than a cleaner edge. An SVG stores the geometry itself: curves and lines described mathematically, so it holds at any size.

Going from one to the other is not a conversion in the sense that PNG to JPG is. The engine finds the edges in your image and redraws them as paths. That is why the quality of what you upload decides the result far more than any setting does, and why a clean logo converts beautifully while a screenshot of a screenshot does not.

How to tell a real vector from a bitmap in a wrapper

Several converters produce an SVG that contains your original bitmap inside an <image> tag. It opens, it previews correctly, and it is useless for cutting or separating, because there is no geometry for a machine to follow.

Open the file in a text editor and search for <image. If it is there, you have a wrapper. Our cut-ready checker does this for you, along with checking that paths are closed.

Why machine formats need units

Pixels are not a physical size. A DXF that does not declare its units makes the receiving software guess, and guessing wrong is the most common reason a part comes out 25.4 times too big or too small. Every DXF written here carries its units in the header.

The other one that bites is the Y axis. SVG and canvas put +Y down the screen; CAD, CAM and G-code put it up. Exporting without correcting for that gives a part mirrored about the X axis. It cuts, it just cuts backwards.

Check an existing file with the DXF unit and size checker.

What the source image needs to be

Around 1000px on the long edge

A comfortable floor for a logo. Below roughly 500 the edges are already soft, and the trace follows that softness faithfully, because it cannot know the blur was not intended.

Flat colour beats gradients

Vector shapes have hard boundaries. A gradient becomes a set of bands, which is fine for a poster effect and wrong for a logo.

The original always wins

If the vector original exists somewhere, it beats any trace, ours included.