What is Makerfern?
Makerfern is a free, browser-based toolkit for turning PNG, JPG and WEBP images into cut-ready SVG files for Cricut, Silhouette, laser cutting and stencils.
A fern grows one frond at a time, and every frond is a smaller copy of the whole plant. Makerfern is built the same way: a set of small, careful tools for people who make things, each one finishing its job properly instead of stopping at "close enough". The first one turns images into files that actually cut.
Why it runs in your browser
Most image converters upload your file, process it on a server or pass it to an AI service, and send back the result. That costs them money on every image, so they count your conversions and charge for more. It also means your artwork sits, however briefly, on computers you don't control.
Makerfern's engine is plain image processing written to run inside the web page. The image never leaves your device (the optional Cloud mode of the coloring page maker, the coloring book maker, the stencil maker, the pixel pattern maker, the knitting chart maker and the latch hook pattern maker is the one exception, and you have to switch it on), conversion has no running cost, and the free plan can be unlimited without a catch.
How the engine works
- Color separation in a perceptual color space, discarding colors that only exist as anti-aliased fringes.
- Background removal by flood fill from the image border, optionally everywhere that color appears.
- Cleanup at cut size: pieces smaller than your minimum, measured in millimetres at the width you'll cut, are merged into their surroundings.
- Tracing along pixel edges, with outer boundaries and holes wound in opposite directions so every cutting program fills them the same way.
- Curve fitting: each outline is reduced to the midpoints of its pixel runs, real corners are kept sharp, and cubic Bézier curves are fitted within a set tolerance.
- Checks: a distance transform measures the width of every part to flag thin spots, and in stencil mode a shortest-path search adds bridges.
What we don't claim
There's no AI in the engine, so nothing is redrawn or invented. The preset numbers are our starting points, not machine manufacturers' specifications. A file that passes every check can still need a test cut on a new material, and we'd rather tell you that than promise otherwise.