"Sketch and Peel" lithography (SPL) has demonstrated the potential to improve the efficiency of electron beam direct writing. However, it is time-consuming to design exposure layouts for complex patterns. In this study, we proposed a method to generate SPL layouts for complex patterns using an edge tracing algorithm to extract digital image contours. First, the color image was converted to a binary image by image graying and the Otsu adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm. Then, the boundary of the binary image was traced by the MATLAB bwboundaries function. Finally, the MATLAB GDS toolbox was utilized to transform the traced boundary to layouts for exposure. The experiments confirmed that the proposed method is effective for extracting the boundaries of images and converting them to layouts. As shown by fabricating a maple leaf-like pattern, the generated layout still maintains its high graphic fidelity when applied to SPL. The versatility of the proposed method for micro-nanomanufacturing was also verified by fabricating other complex patterns of different sizes and different geometries.