Why was my image refused?
SVGProof refuses three kinds of image: photos and textured art (they have no clean shapes, so a trace would be thousands of blobs), files over 5 MB, 17 megapixels or 8192 px on a side, and files it cannot read. A refusal costs nothing, on the web or the API. Crop to the logo, use a flatter version, or resize it.
What does each refusal mean?
| Message (API code) | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Photo or textured image (photo_like) | Smooth tones, texture or detail everywhere: a photo, a painting, a 3D render | Crop to the logo itself, or use a flat version of the design |
Too large (too_large) | Over 5 MB, over 17 megapixels or over 8192 px on a side (the pixels are read from the file header) | Save it smaller (a logo rarely needs more than 2 MB) and under 8192 px |
Cannot read (decode) | Not an image, or a damaged file | Re-save as PNG. Accepted: PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF, BMP |
Why refuse instead of trying?
A trace of a photo is a file of tens of thousands of tiny shapes: slow to open, impossible to edit, useless to a printer, and on the API it would cost you a credit. Saying no in a fraction of a second is the honest answer. The check looks at a small thumbnail of the image, so a refusal is fast.
My logo has a photo or texture in it. What now?
Crop the flat part (the mark or the wordmark) and trace that. For the photographic part, keep the original image: a vector cannot represent it well.
When is SVGProof the wrong tool?
- Photos and painterly art. They have no clean shapes to find, so we refuse them instead of returning thousands of blobs. A photo needs a different tool or a designer.
- Embroidery files. A machine needs a digitized stitch file (DST, PES), which is made by a digitizer from a vector like ours, not by any tracer.
Questions
Am I charged for a refused image?
No. Converting on the web is free, and on the API refused images are refunded automatically.
Are large images scaled down?
Yes: images over 4 megapixels are scaled to 4 megapixels before tracing, which is plenty for a logo. Over 17 megapixels they are refused.
Checked against the product on 2026-10-19. Numbers are measured by the engine, prices come from the checkout. This page as Markdown · Facts with sources