Cricut is a nifty crafting machine that lets you cut and print in one go. Perfect for card, foil, stickers, vinyl, thin wood, plastic sheet, and many other delightful craft materials you may need custom-cut for your projects. Cricut machines come big and small, and you can custom-design any cut/print job with the handy Cricut Design Space program.
However, Cricut does need all your images and shapes to be in SVG file format. SVT is an obscure but extremely useful format that not everyone has encountered before. Here's how to create your own custom SVGs for Cricut projects.
SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphic. In other words, it doesn't lose quality if you shrink the file or blow it up. Why? "Vector" is the answer. The image is saved in coordinates and directions. A vector graphic is layered blobs of digital color with each change in the image dictated mathematically instead of by pixels. A pie-chart image would have a vector pointing at the angle of each pie section. The angle will be perfect no matter what size the image is placed, it will never pixelated because down to the 0.0001 of a millimeter, the angles and vectors will still be the same at each point in the pie chart. The same is true of every angle and curve in a vector graphic. Because SVGs are just saved coordinates, they are also very lightweight.
Why does Cricut need vector graphics? Because a cutter is very precise and needs a direction. SVGs provide that direction with every point on the image, making your cutting tool far more precise than any tracing software could make it with raster (pixel) graphics.
The quick and easy way to convert your PNGs and JPGs into SVGs is an SVG converter program. You can find these for free online and in apps, along with tools inside image editing software, as you'll find in CorelDRAW.
Quick SVG converters have mixed results, so you'll want to experiment and decide if you're satisfied with the quality that each tested SVG converter provides. For a quick project where you need a simple shape converted, SVG converts can provide reliable and fast results.
If you are crafting your own original Cricut SVG designs, your best default filetype is PNGs. PNGs have an alpha channel – a clear background layer – allowing for cutout shapes and easily removable backgrounds. They convert best when dropped into an SVG image editing program. If you need to save original assets or collect assets to make your designs, PNG is a good default, as most collections are not available in SVG format yet.
You can create SVG files and convert files to SVG using the right image editing tool. CorelDRAW and others make it possible to save your images in SVG form, no matter where each component came from. SVG editors are popular with graphic designers and offer a vast set of tools for art creation in many different styles, including making designs for Cricut that import to the Cricut Design Space.
If you are using CorelDRAW to convert your SVGs, take a moment to explore your creation options. While The Design Space puts some basic tools in your hands and even has a simple SVG converting tool. Corel makes it possible to custom-craft your own shapes, prints, and whole-project designs before exporting your chosen files to print through your Cricut.
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