Source quality
Clean boundaries produce cleaner paths
A high-resolution logo with solid fills and strong contrast gives the tracer clear regions to follow. JPEG artifacts, tiny shadows, textured backgrounds, and antialiased noise create extra colors and path nodes. Crop unnecessary space and begin from the cleanest available source; a larger blurry image is not necessarily better than a smaller crisp one.
Trace controls
Detail and color count trade visual fidelity for editable simplicity
Higher detail follows more pixel variation and can produce many small paths. More colors preserve gradients and shading but increase SVG complexity. Blur can suppress noise before tracing, though too much rounds corners and merges features. Start with the Logo or Line Art preset for simple graphics, then change one control at a time.
Vector test
A useful SVG remains clean when zoomed and manageable when inspected
Zoom into curves, corners, holes, and small lettering. True paths should remain sharp, but that alone does not mean the trace is efficient or semantically organized. Open the SVG in a vector editor, inspect its path count and fills, and manually redraw important brand marks when exact geometry, typography, or print production matters.