Image to Laser
Trace PNG, JPEG, WebP and SVG images. Adjust contours and colors, preview laser paths, and export SVG or ILDA.
To convert a bitmap into SVG or ILDA, open Image to Laser, upload the image, and adjust its colors, background and contours. Preserve source colors or choose a new beam color, inspect the laser preview and scanner load, then download an SVG or ILD file. Animation modifiers can turn the image into an animated laser sequence.
Which image formats can I convert?
- PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF and SVG files from your computer (maximum size 10 MB). Bitmap decoding depends on browser support; animated image files use one still image. Large bitmaps are traced at up to 2,048 pixels on the longest side.
- Iconify icon library — 200,000+ icons, searched by name
- Quick Load shapes — Built-in circle, square, triangle, and angular BEAM word for testing
How do I convert an image into a laser file?
Open Image to Laser
Load your image — drag a file onto the canvas, or click the upload button. For icons, use the Iconify search in the left panel.
Adjust IMAGE TRACE — for bitmaps, choose Trace style, Background, Colors, Curve tolerance and Remove speckles.
Animate the artwork — open Animation & Modifiers in Properties. Choose a Quick Start or add individual modifiers, then adjust the timing and frame rate. Leave the chain empty for a still image.
Check the POINT BUDGET panel on the left. Aim for a green point-budget badge (under 70%); yellow means 70–100% of your device profile.
Export — in the row under the preview, click Download SVG for vector artwork (turn on Outline SVG in Properties → TRACE for unfilled contours), Download ILDA to save your .ild file, Send to Animation Studio to continue editing, or Open in ILDA Viewer for a full 3D preview and analysis.
Studio includes unlimited clean ILDA exports. Other plans include 3 clean exports a month, shared across every ILDA tool. See Export to ILDA.
How can I improve the trace?
Laser export uses ILDA Format 5 (2D True Color). Download SVG saves the still vector artwork; animation modifiers apply to ILDA output. If you need Format 0/1 for legacy hardware, open the result in the ILDA Viewer and convert via its Export ILDA dialog.
Bitmap tracing
Background defaults to removing a dominant border color, including nearby shades in a pale gradient. JPEG edge shades are grouped with the artwork colors to avoid tiny extra contours. Choose Keep all colors, Remove white, or Remove black when the automatic result removes something you need. Transparent pixels do not become contours.
Trace style defaults to Outlines — filled artwork, which follows the boundaries of logos and solid shapes. Choose Center line — line drawings for narrow drawn strokes: each stroke becomes a single path instead of two outlines. Center line width sets the widest stroke to treat this way, from 1–100 source pixels (default 12); wider areas keep their outlines. Check small details after changing the width. A photograph of a laser drawing may still contain gaps or faint lines that tracing cannot recover.
Colors limits the palette to 2–32 colors (default 8). Curve tolerance defaults to 1.5; lower values keep finer details and higher values make smoother, simpler curves. Remove speckles defaults to 2; set it to zero to keep tiny marks. Photos may need fewer colors and more speckle removal than logos.
Outline SVG keeps curved edges as Bézier curves and straight runs as endpoint-to-endpoint lines. Center-line SVG uses unfilled paths. ILDA exports sample the artwork and add points needed for scanner travel.
Trace
Unfilled SVG strokes retain their shape and source color when the artwork assigns paint to a group or directly to its strokes. Inspect the preview after importing an SVG before exporting the laser file.
SIMPLIFY runs from 0.5–6.0 and defaults to 2.0. Raise it to remove redundant points from long or densely sampled paths; lower it when a detailed curve loses visible shape. Sharp corners, closures, colors, and separate paths stay anchored to the SVG.
SMOOTH CURVES has OFF (default), NORMAL, and STRONG levels. It changes curved SVG paths only, so straight logo edges and right-angle corners stay sharp. Changing either Trace control re-converts instantly.
Show Point Density
A visualization toggle that overlays the individual laser points on the preview so you can see where points cluster. Dense clusters are where the scanner slows down — useful for spotting stress before export.
Beam Color
Color lives in Properties on the right. Preserve source colors is the last switch in TRACE, under Outline SVG, and starts on. While it is on, a COLOR section lists each detected source color with a Recolor picker, and RESET COLORS restores the detected palette; the section stays hidden for a single-color source. Turn Preserve source colors off and the COLOR section shows the COLOR PALETTE instead: pick a beam color to recolor every path. Turning the switch back on returns to the image palette. Black and near-black artwork projects as white so the lettering stays visible; the artwork SVG retains its original colors. An explicit recolor keeps the color you choose. Dark source colors may appear dim in projection.
Target frame rate sets the preview timing and scanner-load estimate. SET PREVIEW TARGET TO … FPS selects a lower estimate without removing image details. ILDA files do not specify your external player’s scan speed; set playback in that player too. A green load badge is not a guarantee of projection legibility.
How can I fit the trace to my scanner’s frame rate?
Under POINTS, compare FIT 30 FPS (the label follows your target frame rate) with KEEP ORIGINAL. Each choice shows the point count it exports. FIT 30 FPS is selected when you open the tool, the same scanner-safe choice Animation Studio and OSC-1 start with: it reduces detail to fit the selected device and frame rate, so a trace that reads OVER LIMIT does not download over the limit. Check the preview, especially small letters and curves. Any omitted corners or paths are reported. KEEP ORIGINAL writes the full traced detail, every point, whatever the budget says.
The choice applies to the preview, ILDA file, viewer handoff and Live. SVG artwork keeps its original contours. A fitted frame can still show NEAR LIMIT when it uses most of the selected scanner’s capacity. Point counts alone do not guarantee flicker-free projection. LOWER TARGET WITH HEADROOM chooses a lower frame rate with extra capacity; set the matching playback rate on your external player when using an ILDA file.
How do I turn off decorative animations?
Open Settings → APPEARANCE to change Animated canvas border and Plexus background. Both are off by default and apply across Laser, Scope, and Viz.
Animation & Modifiers
Open Animation & Modifiers in the right-hand Properties panel. Its Quick Starts match Text to Laser:
- Write draws the artwork stroke by stroke.
- Tracer sends moving tails along its outlines.
- Glitch breaks up and displaces parts of the drawing.
- Sparkle adds sparse moving accents.
- Pulse fades brightness down and back up.
- Neon Ink combines a drawing reveal with changing color and a settling ink effect.
Each Quick Start is shown at its default settings on the same icon; WRITE and NEON INK use a 6-second Duration here instead of the default 16.
Each Quick Start replaces the current chain with editable modifiers. Use + Add to stack Trace Reveal, Color Flow, Ink Settle, Glitch, Sparkle, Soft Pulse, Beam Runners, Sweep, Contact FX, Spotlights, Laser Cannon, Trace Bars, Grid, or Color Ramps. Their controls and preset files work the same way in Text to Laser.
Trace Reveal starts with a moving leading dot and leaves the completed outline behind it. Turn off Keep laser trace when only the dot should be sent to the laser. Play on any modifier restarts the whole animation. Use the enable dot to switch an effect off, Reset to restore that modifier's settings, or its remove button to delete it. Clear removes the complete chain. Save Preset and Load let you share a modifier look between artwork and text.
For an effect with its own duration, Hold After Effect adds time after that effect finishes; the total is shown beneath the slider. For other chains, DURATION sets the animation length. Frame Rate offers 24, 25, 30, 48, or 60 FPS. Check POINT BUDGET again after changing the chain or frame rate.
The canvas preview, downloaded ILDA, ILDA Viewer handoff, and Live playback show the animated result. Replacing the SVG keeps the chosen modifiers; Reset clears the artwork and its animation. For audio-controlled modifiers, continue in Animation Studio.
Working With Iconify
- Type a name or keyword into the icon search box (e.g., "lightning bolt", "music", "arrow")
- Press enter or click the search button
- Click any result to load it instantly
Search is by name only — there are no style or category filters. The icon library contains icons from 100+ open-source icon sets including Material Symbols, Phosphor, Tabler, and Heroicons.
Design Tips
Check the contours. Laser graphics trace outlines rather than filled areas. Turn on Outline SVG (Properties → TRACE) before Download SVG to save unfilled contours for other vector workflows. For laser cutting, verify dimensions, duplicate boundaries and machine settings in your cutting software before running a job.
Simpler is better. Start with Simplify 2.0 and use Show Point Density to inspect the result. If an illustration still contains thousands of meaningful nodes, simplifying it in the source editor can help further.
Complex SVGs need more work. Detailed illustrations with fills, gradients, and clipping masks won't convert well. ILDA works best with clean, geometric vector art.
Sending to Animation Studio
Click Send to Animation Studio to continue with an editable SVG layer. The layer keeps its colors — the image's own colors while Preserve source colors is on, or the one beam color you picked — along with its modifiers and complete animation duration, including Hold After Effect. In Animation Studio, COLOR under PROPERTIES offers Preserve source colors for the layer; pick a palette color there to draw the whole layer in one color, or switch it back on to return to the image's colors. You can adjust the imported modifiers in the Animation tab. From there you can:
- Add keyframe animation
- Apply audio-reactive parameters
- Layer it with other shapes
- Export a full animation sequence
Opening in Viewer
Click "Open in ILDA Viewer" to load your conversion directly into the ILDA Viewer for analysis. This is the recommended step before exporting to hardware — check the stress heat map and safety report. Switch the viewer to 3D to see the frames as beams from a simulated projector; the 3D Beam Viewer covers the beam modes and camera views.
Convert or Live
The Convert / Live switch at the top of the workspace picks what the tool drives.
Convert (the default) is the file workflow described above: tune the conversion, then download ILDA or hand off to another tool.
Live streams the converted frames straight to a laser. The Laser Output panel appears in the Properties sidebar (the sidebar opens itself when you switch): choose Preview, the Simulator, or a supported DAC — Helios directly, Ether Dream and LaserCube through the Bridge app. The moment hardware connects, the safety dock appears along the bottom edge with the device status, Power, Arm, Blackout, and Start; collapsing a sidebar can never hide it. Confirm the two-step Arm, then press Start — the playing frame goes to the projector at the point rate set by your device profile, through the same output pipeline as every other laser tool. If the output settles into a dot that stops moving, the laser fades out after about 1.5 seconds and Beam blanked: output not moving appears in amber under Arm (or in the dock) until it moves again — see Motion guard. The panel's Frame rate slider trades detail against flicker: the per-frame point budget is the scanner rate divided by the frame rate. Galvo speed, Output scale, Power limit, Corner brightness (Advanced), and Color delay (Advanced) are documented in full under Laser DAC Output, and the color delay is remembered per DAC. Press Esc (or Ctrl+B / ⌘B) to black out from the keyboard; Ctrl+A / ⌘A and Ctrl+S / ⌘S press Arm and Start — see keyboard control. A MIDI pad or fader can also black out or stop the laser — see MIDI blackout.
Related
- How to convert SVG to ILDA — the illustrated version, start to finish
- Video to Laser — turn a movie or a live camera into ILDA
- Laser show safety guide — what to settle before the file reaches a projector