Make it work at sign scale.
Upload artwork. Get vector that holds its edges at three metres and cuts to shape.
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Real vector craft — see for yourself
Your trace lands as genuine, editable SVG paths — the same clean vector work behind Clearly’s bee-ecosystem murals. Infinitely scalable, every path editable, ready for Cricut, print or the web. No embedded pixels, no tangled auto-trace mess.
Hand-authored on the Clearly canvas · editable SVG, not raster.
The cut line is a spot colour with a specific name, not a layer you label
Large-format RIP software finds the contour cut path by looking for a spot colour named exactly `CutContour` — set to overprint, usually 0% tint so it never prints. Not a layer called "cut", not a magenta stroke, not a note in the email. Get the name wrong and the RIP prints your cut line as a visible coloured outline around the finished sign, which is the sort of mistake you discover on the finished sign. It is a five-second fix and an expensive omission, and it is the single thing sign shops most often send artwork back for.
What a large-format printer needs from the file
- Cut path
- Spot colour named exactly `CutContour`, overprint on, 0% tint.
- Bleed
- ≈3 mm trimmed; more for wrapped or mounted substrates.
- Text height
- ≈25 mm of cap height per 10 m of viewing distance.
- Minimum stroke
- Set by viewing distance, not by the file. Hairlines vanish outdoors.
- Why vector
- A sign is metres wide. Raster at that scale is unusable at any DPI.
- Colour
- Spot/Pantone for brand-critical colour; large flat areas show drift most.
How it works
A logo or design at any size — vector output scales to the finished sign.
Add the outline you want cut as a spot colour named CutContour, overprint, 0% tint.
Extend the artwork past the trim, then view at 10% zoom as a proxy for standing back.
Free watermarked preview. $10 unlocks the clean, exclusive commercial file — emailed, no account, no subscription.
FAQ
Because the RIP did not recognise it as a cut path, so it treated it as artwork. The path has to be a spot colour named exactly CutContour with overprint enabled — the name is what the software matches on, and it is case- and spelling-sensitive.
A working rule is about 25 mm of capital height for every 10 metres of viewing distance. A sign read from across a car park needs far larger type than the same design looks like it needs on a monitor.
For photographic content, yes — large-format printing tolerates surprisingly low DPI because viewing distance is large. For logos, type and hard edges, vector is what keeps them crisp at any size.
Around 3 mm for a trimmed flat sign, and more where material wraps an edge or is mounted into a frame. Ask the shop — it varies by substrate more than by size.