# Why was my image refused?

Source: https://svgproof.com/guides/why-image-refused · Checked 2026-10-19 · Published by SVGProof

> 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.

## Related

- https://svgproof.com/ai-logo-to-svg
- https://svgproof.com/guides/auto-trace-or-redraw
- https://svgproof.com/midjourney-logo-to-vector