14 Aug 20134plain text

Converting SVG to PNG online and in your terminal

This post was published in 2013 and is kept here for reference. It may contain information that's outdated or inaccurate.

This post is mostly for my own benefit on the rare occasion that I have to convert SVG files to PNG.

I always spend a large amount of time looking for an online SVG to PNG converter or a terminal one-liner to do this.

First install librsvg using brew:

$ brew update && brew upgrade
$ brew install librsvg
$ ln -s /usr/local/bin/rsvg-convert /usr/local/bin/rsvg

Then, you can either using rsvg directly, or make a function like the following:

# svg2png [file] [width] [height]
function svg2png {
    file=$1
    file_name="${file%.*}"
    file_ext="${file##*.}"
    shift
    width=${1:-"128"}
    height=${2:-"128"}

    if [ "${file_ext}" != "svg" ]; then
        printf "\n${file} is not an svg!\n"
    else
        rsvg -w $width -h $height "${file}" -o "${file_name}.png"
    fi
}

Using CairoSVG and Python - http://cairosvg.org/
Using svg2png and PhantomJS/Node.js - https://npmjs.org/package/svg2png

If you found this useful let me know, I for one am glad that I’ve got this information in one place now.

Discussion

Richardrtg commented January 22, 2014

Also ksvgtopng in Ubuntu package kde-runtime

Scotty commented November 13, 2014

thank you. Totally awesome…..the grump icon that is :-)

norm_c commented December 09, 2014

Don’t follow the instructions for the librsvg install - I did it without thinking about the commands and what happened was it upgraded a bunch of my tools! Now I have to go through a few hours of testing and upgrading other tools just to get my development environment back up. And to top it off, brew was not able to install the lbrsvg tool due to dependencies that it could not install.Yup, it’s my fault I should not have blindly followed the above directions, hopefully this post will keep someone else from making the same mistake.

Max Glenister commented December 09, 2014

I suppose you should say “Don’t blindly follow the instructions” then – for most people updating and upgrading brew is a good first step, and if it’s not they would know otherwise.

Converting SVG to PNG online and in your terminal

SVG icon resources:

Online services to convert SVG to PNG that aren’t totally rubbish:

Convert SVG to PNG using your terminal (Mac, Linux):

Discussion