What Recraft Vectorize is good at

Recraft Vectorize solves one specific problem: you have a raster image that needs to be a vector. A client logo that only exists as a JPEG in an old email. A hand-drawn sketch that needs to get into Figma. A scanned signature for a document template. A PNG icon that needs to ship as SVG in a design system. All of these situations used to mean opening Illustrator and running auto-trace — then spending 20 minutes cleaning up the resulting mess of jagged anchor points.

Recraft Vectorize uses a trained model rather than pixel-by-pixel tracing, which produces smoother, more intentional paths. Logos come back with clean fills and discrete color regions. Linework retains its character without the noise. The resulting SVG is editable — you can select a fill, change a color, or adjust a path — in a way that a mechanical trace output often is not without significant cleanup.

The practical scope is clear: input constraints are PNG, JPG, or WebP under 5 MB, between 256 px and 4096 px on any dimension. Complex photographic scenes with gradients and photorealistic texture are outside what any vectorizer handles cleanly — the sweet spot is logos, icons, illustrations, diagrams, and hand-drawn work with discrete regions and defined edges.

Where it's weaker: it cannot create something from nothing. If you need a new vector design — a logo, an icon set, an illustration — from a text description, Recraft Text to Vector V4.1 is the right tool. Vectorize is a conversion utility, not a generation tool.

A reasonable mental model: reach for Recraft Vectorize when you have an image that needs to be an SVG. Reach for Recraft V4.1 when you need to create one from scratch.