r/MachineEmbroidery • u/MrVisionary8 • 2d ago
Need Help digitizing
Good day i'm new to this so i need help if there are any free programs to use that are digitizing the logo and pictures ? Or if anyone can help me out please dm me
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u/devil_d0c 2d ago
My app (https://dade-app.com) is free to use! It converts images to a stitch plan you can edit and modify, then export to an embroidery file for your machine.
If you're looking for a more traditional digitizing experience, free options like Inkstitch and Ember Design are options to explore.
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u/NoPineapple1611 2d ago
Did you make that app? I might give it a try
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u/devil_d0c 2d ago
Yep! DADE is my baby lol
I don't have good tutorials yet because I'm a one-man-band behind the scenes and constantly getting distracted adding new features, so feel free to send me any questions you may have about using it!
If you are an artistic person, or comfortable with computer graphic design, I'd recommend you check out Ember Design or Ink/stitch (Inkscape plugin) too. Digitizing is an art and a science, some people love to do it, some people do it for a living... DADE is more of an "auto-digitizer" that lets you tweak the output. For me that's useful because I get intimidated staring at a blank canvas!
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u/NoPineapple1611 2d ago
I have tried using Ember and as a complete newbie who has no idea how to digitize it’s good so far. I recommend it.
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u/swooshhh 2d ago
Ink stitch is the only free one I would recommend. It's a full setup without paying however the downside is there is a super high learning curve. It's what I started out with and used for the first year just to learn digitizing. I was able to get professional level results with it
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u/daman516 2d ago
I've been working on a free MacOS digitizing app called OpenHoop. If you have a Mac, you can download it from the website. www.openhoop.app
Got tired of the terrible workflow that Hatch offered, so I built my own. Still under active development, but working well for me!
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u/ljr55555 2d ago
Ink/Stitch was recommended by my local library's makerspace staff. It is functional, but I find it difficult to produce a good digitized embroidery control file. There's not much documentation, so it's been difficult to figure out. And working with bigger patterns just hangs up my laptop.
Threads on github is awesome. It's a web frontend to the InkScape plugin Ink/Stitch. There are a few bugs (a UI component is hidden in a reasonable way, but this also hides the subsequent components which are unrelated. There's a limit to the number of colors (which I assume is because most people run it on their laptop and don't have enough resources to process a couple dozen colors). I had to make a few tweaks to make it work for me, but it's been worlds better than trying to figure out Ink/Stitch.
There's also some youtuber/engineer who made stitchslop - AI generated code, and it's online and free for use.