: How to prepare an image / graphic file to be printed or embroidered on clothing and garments? I recently created some graphics with Adobe Illustrator, saved them as PDFs and sent them to a

@Sue6373160

the best starting point is ALWAYS to ask how the printing company wants the artwork to be delivered. It may be just a problem with i.e. overlapping paths or that paths need to be converted to outlines.

besides that i agree with matt. let them do the conversion for the embroidery. that way they guarantee a quality result.

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@Barnes313

If you are looking to avoid the fee there are open-source digitizing solutions such as SewArt but it uses raster based images. Be advised that free solutions typically result in poor quality digitizing files.

Now just to make sure you understand the purpose of digitizing is to assign the color and path to the embroidery machine as so:



That said I would advise paying for the digitize fee because better software, hopefully, is being used that will result in a better digitized file. Also, the better software uses vector based files for conversions. If you read the terms some companies will provide the digitized file after the conversion. Personally, it is worth the money to make sure your file is generated properly and is a quality product for your potential clients to see. Shop around though. Some shops will charge .00-0.00 for a file but that also depends on the difficulty, stitch count, pattern, colors, etc. etc.

Software


Creative DRAWings 6 Embroidery Digitizing Software
Ebay Alternatives and used copies
Embrid
Wilcom Embroidery Studio sort of a plug-in for CorelDraw (which is included)
(FREE) SophieSew
Brother-PE that can work off of .eps files
Embroidery i2 is a plugin for Illustrator

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