Built around the way you actually work.

Your reference image floats on top of your live camera feed. Adjust opacity from a faint guide to a solid projection. Slide, scale, rotate, and flip until it sits exactly where you want it.

Use any USB webcam, your laptop's built-in camera, or pair your phone wirelessly. The phone option turns any tripod or clamp mount into an overhead rig — scan a QR code, no app to install.

Once locked, the app tracks your canvas corners and keeps the overlay registered to them — so if you nudge the camera or your desk shifts slightly, the overlay adjusts automatically.

Fine-tune how much of your reference shows through with a per-layer opacity slider. Go fully transparent for freehand or fully opaque for tight tracing.

Save your reference, your camera angle, and your overlay settings as a project. Come back tomorrow and pick up exactly where you left off.

Stack multiple references on the same canvas. Reorder, toggle visibility, and control each layer's opacity independently. Free includes 2 layers; Pro is unlimited.

A curated library of icons, textures, and illustrations to use as references or composition starters. Built for makers who want a quick visual without a stock-photo hunt.

If you have more than one camera connected (laptop webcam plus an external, for example), switch between them without leaving the editor.

Reduce a complex photo to clean outlines. Perfect for simplifying animal fur, foliage, or portrait details before you trace.

Switch to high-contrast grayscale to make value relationships unmistakably clear, or flip to inverted to see shapes rather than subjects.

Upload a scan of a reference and Desktop Tracer automatically detects document edges and suggests a crop — saving setup time. A Pro feature.

Adjust your reference directly in the editor to pull out the details you're tracing — without touching the original file.

Overlay a customizable grid from 20px to 200px spacing. The classic grid-transfer method, live.

A precise center crosshair snaps your eye to the midpoint of your canvas — essential for symmetrical work.

Overlay compositional guides used by professional illustrators and photographers directly onto your reference. Golden ratio and perspective grid are Pro guides.

A high-zoom loupe follows your cursor for inspecting fine details. Adjustable zoom from 1.5× to 5×.

Click anywhere in your reference image to sample that exact color, then see HEX, RGB, CMYK, and closest Pantone references ranked by perceptual accuracy.

Match colors through universal values instead of product catalogs. Desktop Tracer focuses on references you can use with your preferred materials.

Generate a full palette from your reference — dominant colors, accent tones, and a suggested color plan. One click.

Build and save custom palettes. Tag colors, annotate mixes, and export printable palette references.

No download. No install. No version updates to manage. Works on Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Your live camera feed is processed entirely in your browser — no video frames are ever sent to our servers. Your reference images are stored to your account only when you save a project.

Canvas, wood, paper, glass, fabric, cake, leather, ceramic. If your camera can see it, you can trace on it.

Opacity nudge, layer toggle, zoom loupe, canvas lock — every common action has a shortcut. Minimal friction once you're in the flow.