I personally know a lot of folks that own one or more embroidery machines. Whether they use them for business or hobby, they all have one thing in common - they love embroidery. They spend countless hours at their machines embroidering anything and everything in sight. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

One thing they don’t all have in common is digitizing. Some digitize their own designs, and some don’t. It could be they don’t want to, or it could be that they don’t know how. Some have tried but just couldn’t get the hang of it. Others are considering it but have yet to take the plunge.

If you are contemplating buying a digitizing program there are a few things you should consider beforehand. Determine if it’s really something you have a need for. Can you justify the expense? Will you use the software regularly or will it sit unused on your hard drive for weeks at a time? Are you willing to invest the amount of time required to learn the program? It’s a major purchase and one that’s not returnable after the package has been opened.

Some folks in the embroidery business feel what works best for them is having a contract digitizer do the work for them. They don’t want to spend the time. They’d rather be embroidering or out getting more orders. There’s nothing wrong with that approach if that’s what works for you. Digitizing costs are normally passed on to the customer, so there is no out of pocket cost. The hobbyist may feel it’s the most cost effective way too. If they only need an occasional design, purchasing expense digitizing software may not be cost effective at all.

There are many digitizing programs available today. No matter which one you choose, they all do basically the same thing. In one fashion or another they allow you to convert graphic images into stitches. How they accomplish that, and how much manual control you have, is proportional with the price you pay for the program. Just like automobiles you can purchase a Chevrolet, a Rolls Royce, or anything in between.

Many of the digitizing software packages are advertised as “Auto-digitizing” programs. This sounds really great when you’re reading the back of the box, but in reality it’s not quite that automatic. I’ve seen users become totally frustrated when attempting to use this feature. If you don’t have an exceptionally clean graphic forget auto-digitizing. It’s just not going to work.

You could spend hours cleaning up graphics, as some digitizers do, and probably get pretty good auto-digitizing results. It would, however, require a separate graphics software program. There is nothing wrong with that approach if you have the time to spend cleaning up graphics, but in my opinion it takes longer to clean up graphics than it does to manually punch the design. I manually punch every one of my designs and I occasionally work from some pretty poor graphics.

The point I am trying to make is simple. If you plan to purchase an expensive digitizing program, know what you are getting into. As I noted earlier, most of the software companies offering digitizing software emphasize “Auto-Digitizing” in their ads. It’s an attractive claim that entices folks to buy, but it can lead to total frustration. Unless you fully understand what’s happening, you will soon blame yourself for all the poor designs being auto generated by your software. When that happens you may simply give up.

Anyone that intends to get into digitizing should be prepared to learn how to manually punch designs. You’ll need to learn how to use each and every tool that comes with the program. You’ll have to learn about compensation, registration, underlay, stitch types, stitch angles, fill patterns, tie-offs, in and out points, and so much more. Even if you are successful in getting a clean graphic to auto-digitize, you will find that you want to make changes to what the program generated. You won’t be happy with something - I can almost guarantee it.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from learning to digitize. It can be a lot of fun and very rewarding, but it’s an art that takes a considerable amount of time to learn. The learning curves of most of these programs are quite steep. You’ll experience a lot of frustration in the beginning, but if you persevere you’ll eventually catch on. The more you practice, the better you’ll get. Just don’t be lulled into thinking that all you have to do is buy the program, import a graphic, and “voila” – out comes an embroidery design ready to sew on your garment. It’s just not that simple. Anyone that tries to convince you their software will do that is not giving you all the facts.

Before you lay out a large wad of your hard earned cash, be sure you fully understand the capabilities of the software you are considering. Ask about possible classes in your local area. Explore the possibilities of tutorials and training videos online. You are most likely going to need help getting started, so it might be a good idea to check before you buy. The last thing you need is to be stuck with an expensive piece of software you can’t figure out.

Believe it or not, having a fairly good working knowledge of computers may help give you a head start too. You’ll find it easier to navigate and use new programs if you understand a little about how the underlying operating system works. It will be helpful to know how to do simple tasks such as installing and uninstalling programs, searching for files, moving and copying files, zipping and un-zipping files, changing screen resolution, setting file associations, using the help system, and other basic operations. I’m not suggesting you have to be a computer whiz, but it helps to know your way around.

No matter which way you decide to go, it's important that you have fun doing it. If it’s not fun then you probably took the wrong road.

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