How to Trace a Logo in LightBurn

What This Guide Covers

LightBurn includes a Trace Image function that converts raster images — JPG, PNG, BMP — into vector paths without leaving the laser software. For clean, high-contrast logos it produces usable results quickly. For logos with gradients, fine detail, or JPEG compression, it reaches its limits fast.

This guide walks through the exact steps, explains every parameter in the trace dialog, shows which logos trace well and which fail and explains when Laserlinez gives you the multi-layer SVG output that LightBurn's trace cannot produce.

Understanding the Trace Settings

Threshold (0–255): Every pixel is classified as black or white based on this cutoff. Pixels below the value become engraved areas; pixels above become empty space. For logos on colored backgrounds, you may need to pre-process the image in an editor to isolate the logo on a solid white background before threshold can cleanly separate foreground from background.

Ignore less than (mm²): Removes closed regions smaller than this area after tracing. Increasing this eliminates noise spots and compression artifacts without affecting the main logo shapes. Start at 0.5 mm² and increase until stray specks disappear without removing intentional small design elements.

Smooth Corners: Applied after tracing to convert pixel-stepped edges into smooth Bézier curves. A value of 0 preserves every original corner; 1.0 applies maximum smoothing. For logos, 0.2–0.5 smooths anti-aliasing artifacts while preserving intentional sharp corners in the design.

Optimize: Removes redundant anchor points that lie within a set tolerance of the line between their neighbours. This directly reduces node count. Fewer nodes mean simpler toolpaths, more consistent laser speed and cleaner burn quality — particularly important on curves and corners where over-complex paths cause micro-hesitations visible in the finished engrave.

When LightBurn's Trace Works Well

The built-in trace tool excels at a specific set of inputs. Match these characteristics and you will get clean, usable results in under a minute:

• Simple logos with 1–2 solid colors and no gradients — a single threshold value cleanly separates foreground from background
• Black and white artwork: wordmarks, monograms, silhouettes and simple icons with solid filled shapes
• PNG exports from vector software (Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDRAW) with no anti-aliasing or transparency
• Technical diagrams and line-graphic SVG with solid black strokes on a clean white background
• Images specifically pre-processed to pure black and white before importing

When LightBurn's Trace Fails

Understanding these failure modes will save you hours of troubleshooting. If your input matches any of these, expect poor results:

• Photographs and photorealistic images — tonal gradients produce thousands of fragmented regions with no meaningful boundaries
• JPEG images — compression block artifacts trace as a grid of tiny rectangular noise regions around every edge
• Logos with gradients, soft shadows, or glows — edges are ambiguous; no threshold value cleanly separates them
• Low-contrast inputs — light gray logo on white, or dark blue on black — threshold cannot reliably find the boundary
• Complex logos with fine detail, thin strokes, or small text — fine elements collapse or become blobs depending on threshold
• Multi-color logos requiring separate engraving passes — LightBurn trace outputs binary (black/white) only, no layered output
• Website or PDF screenshots — typically JPEG-compressed, low-resolution and anti-aliased at the edges

When You Need More: Laserlinez for Complex Logo Engraving

LightBurn's trace is a binary tool — black or white, engraved or not. Real logos rarely work that way. Laserlinez was purpose-built for laser engraving file preparation and handles the cases that the built-in trace cannot.

Laserlinez analyzes the full tonal range of your image using AI-powered line detection algorithms. Instead of a single threshold decision, it maps different tonal ranges to separate vector layers — each layer corresponds to a different engraving pass at a different power level. The output is a multi-layer SVG where each group represents a distinct engraving depth.

When imported into LightBurn, each SVG layer group appears as a separate entry in the Cuts/Layers panel. You assign different speed and power settings per layer to create depth variation in your engrave — delivering results that a single binary trace simply cannot achieve. Path optimization is applied automatically, producing minimal-node Bézier curves that translate directly to consistent laser speed and clean burn edges.