What Is a Contour Cut?
A contour cut is a cut that follows the outline of a printed design instead of a basic shape like a rectangle or circle. If you print a picture of a dog and the machine cuts around the dog itself, ears and tail and all, that is a contour cut. It is how professional stickers, labels, and decals get their custom shapes.
Contour Cut Meaning in Plain Terms
The word contour just means outline. In printing and vinyl work, contour cutting means the cutter traces the shape of your artwork. The machine needs two things to do this: the printed image, and a vector path that tells the blade exactly where to travel.
On print-and-cut machines like the Roland BN-20, that vector path lives inside your PDF as a spot color named CutContour. The printer prints your artwork, then the cutting head follows the CutContour path around it. Other ecosystems do the same thing with different names: Cricut calls it Print Then Cut, Silhouette calls it a cut line with registration marks. The concept is identical.
Contour Cut vs Die Cut vs Kiss Cut
These terms overlap and get mixed up constantly. Here is how they relate:
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Contour cut | The cut path follows the artwork outline. Describes the shape of the cut. |
| Kiss cut | The blade cuts through the vinyl but not the backing paper. The sticker peels off the sheet. |
| Die cut | The cut goes all the way through vinyl and backing. The sticker is its own custom-shaped piece. |
| Through cut | Same as die cut. Roland and VersaWorks use this term for full-depth cuts. |
So a sticker can be both contour cut and kiss cut at the same time: the cut follows the design outline (contour) and only goes through the vinyl layer (kiss). Most professional sticker shops sell exactly that combination.
Contour Cutting Vinyl: How It Works
On a print-and-cut workflow, the process runs in this order:
- 1. You prepare a file containing the artwork plus a contour cut path (the CutContour spot color on Roland machines)
- 2. The machine prints the artwork on vinyl along with small registration marks
- 3. An optical sensor reads the marks to align the blade with the print
- 4. The blade follows the contour path, cutting the exact shape of your design
The cut path usually sits slightly outside the artwork edge, typically 0.06 to 0.15 inches, which creates the small white border you see on most stickers. That gap also forgives tiny alignment errors between the print and the cut.
How to Make a Contour Cut File
The traditional way is vector software: place your image in Adobe Illustrator, trace an outline path, offset it, assign a spot color named exactly CutContour, and export a PDF with the spot color preserved. It works, but it takes 10 to 30 minutes per design and one wrong export setting breaks the cut line.
The fast way is CutContour. Upload a PNG or JPG, set your size and offset, and download a VersaWorks-ready PDF in about 10 seconds. The contour path and spot color are generated automatically, and you can convert up to 20 designs at once.
Make Your First Contour Cut File Free
Upload a PNG, get a contour cut PDF ready for Roland VersaWorks. No vector software needed.