There is a general consensus regarding the book "Digitizing 101" as the bible, for learning about the art of digitizing. It's by Thomas Moore, Jr, and costs about $210.00
John Deer has an inexpensive and very helpful book "Digitizing Made Easy" which should be read by beginners and experienced digitizers alike. It's really very good.
Folks have a tendency to believe that digitizing will be easy and automatic. Digitizing is not easy or automatic. Digitizing is NOT merely converting a picture into stitches (although that is how it is depicted).
The skill of the digitizer is much more important than the quality of the program used to digitize. Digitizing is not an automatic process. It involves- Learning how to use the digitizing software.
- Learning from several sew-outs, observing the good and bad features of each pattern.
- How to manipulate the stitches.
- How a good design goes together.
You can purchase a very excellent piano, and take lessons from the best, but it may take a while until you become a capable pianist. Study and practice are required before reasonable skill levels are achieved in music or embroidery digitizing. With practice, you can make elegant and amazing designs that sew out well and are works of art. Without study, you will be frustrated by the quality of your digitizing and poor sewability of the design. There are physical problems that occur with thread, fabric and the process of sewing. Knowledge of these physical problems is one of the key factors separating good digitizers from the rest.
There are programs that are largely automatic (such as Click-N-Stitch, Origins and Generations) for folks who want instant gratification without spending too much time learning about digitizing. While the results are not as professional unless you do lots of editing to incorporate the physical rules of embroidery, it certainly is faster and less frustrating to have the program automatically "digitize" your design.
Embird Studio is one of the most complete manual digitizing programs available, but with sophisticated tools and a multitude of settings and options. It is a professional quality program that generates wonderful designs with a limited amount of fuss. If you understand the basics of embroidery, the physics of push and pull, the nature of fabric, and the logic of digitizing, you can make excellent designs with Embird.
Embroidery is a very physical process and anyone who has ever sewn has learned a few of the rules, including:
- Stitches too long Your fabric draws up and can gather over a long distance.
- Stitches too short Your fabric will get knots underneath or lumps in the way it is sewn.
- Satin stitches too wide Your fabric will tunnel and the stitches will look funny.
- Sew on the bias of the fabric The instability may result in unexpected appearance.
Embroiderers stabilize a bit, but the only way to override the sewing rules is to create an unmovable surface to sew on. That's why embroidery machine dealers drag out that really stiff material that won't distort when pulled together by the combined forces of several thousand embroidery stitches. You wouldn't wear it, but even bad digitizing look good when sewn on it. In the real world, the digitizer has to adjust the design to avoid problems on real material, with minimal stabilizer, so the embroiderer and the wearer can enjoy the beauty of the design without the heartaches.
Each and every digitizing program has tools and methods you must learn. This takes time and experience. Even the best autodigitizing programs require a huge amount of creator input to make the design work correctly and look nice. You need to STUDY and PRACTICE. The computer programs make the whole process easier, because we no longer have to set every stitch by hand. But expecting to be able to digitize a professional design without spending any time learning the physics or the program is akin to expecting to be able to compose a great piano concerto simply because you bought the piano, and the most expensive piano lessons available. Yes, you have the materials necessary, but without either a bit of study or a gift of genius...it isn't going to happen.
Every computer program is like this...you have to learn the rules, the process, and the tools. The more you work with it the easier it becomes. If you have used a similar program before, you will find it easier to use than if you have never done it.
Digitizing
Digitizing is much more than just changing a picture into stitch areas and the view that you see on the computer screen is in NO way representative of the actual sew out. Thread and fabric are physical and have properties that the laws of physics act on during sew out and you must digitize to honor these properties. Even a "3-D" view of your design is only 2-D and has no physics involved...it is just a preview.
For example, a large area of fill will draw in the fabric in the direction of the fill, with a bigger effect if the fill is on the angle of the bias.
So, you must digitize your fill to be slightly larger to accommodate this.
You'll find you'll need to understand compensation (the elongation of a fill in the direction of the fill to reduce the shrinkage), understitching (extra stitches under the fill to stabilize the fabric and eliminate gaps and other problems), overlap (two or more sections of fill that are over or under each other to prevent gaps, outlining (using slightly ON TOP of the fill to avoid gaps) and a host of other things that are affected when you sew out your design.
Novices crank out designs using an autodigitizing program. After a bit of practice, the novice will change the default values, then graduate to modifying the generated output, then might chuck the autodigitizer because he can get better results quicker by using a program like Embird.
So, a digitizer's experience, expertise, and software all come into play to create huge differences in the quality of the finished product. But, so does the embroiderer's experience, expertise, and machine.
But, also realize, that the best digitizers design for a specific fabric, stabilizer, needle size, and thread combination. Changing any of those variables will change the way the digitizer approaches the entire design...everything from pathing, to underlay, to stitch directions. Designs that are not custom try to hit an average use target. But not all the purchasers are average users, with average machines, thread tensions, hooping skills, and material to be decorated.
All digitizing software does is generate stitches. The degree of control that you have over how those stitches are generated determines the cost of the software. But...bigger, better, faster software will not make someone a better digitizer. Learning the fundamentals of how thread, needles, speed all distort the fabric and how to compensate for those distortions is what differentiates a decent digitizer from everyone else. Learning how to properly path the design so the needle stays in the fabric where it can sew faster is important. Learning how to save stitches affects the run time of a design and your bottom line.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|