Convert a picture to an embroidery file

• To PES

  For Brother, Baby Lock, or Bernette

  • PNG PES
  • JPG PES
  • WEBP PES
  • SVG PES

• To DST

  For Tajima, Ricoma, or Happy

  • PNG DST
  • JPG DST
  • WEBP DST
  • SVG DST

• To JEF

  For Janome, Elna, or Kenmore

  • PNG JEF
  • JPG JEF
  • WEBP JEF
  • SVG JEF

• To EXP

  For Bernina or Melco

  • PNG EXP
  • JPG EXP
  • WEBP EXP
  • SVG EXP

Which picture works best?

SVG and large PNG files give the cleanest edges; JPG and WEBP work well when they're high quality. Around 10 pixels per millimetre of finished embroidery is plenty.

• PNG

  PNG is the best everyday starting point for embroidery. It's lossless, so edges stay crisp and flat colours stay flat, and it can carry a transparent background. StitchMyPic leaves transparent areas unstitched: the fabric shows through instead of becoming a large fill with thousands of extra stitches.

• JPG

  JPG photos and scans are compressed. Compression leaves faint halos and blocky noise around edges, and the background is part of the picture rather than transparent. When StitchMyPic reduces the picture to thread colours it folds those in-between shades back into your main colours, and the background removal in the editor takes out a plain backdrop, so stray specks don't turn into extra colour stops.

• WEBP

  WEBP is the format most websites and social networks serve today, so it's often what you get when you save a logo from a page. It can be lossy, with soft halos around edges like a JPG, or lossless like a PNG, and it supports transparency. StitchMyPic reads it directly: there's no need to convert it to PNG first.

• SVG

  SVG vector logos are ideal for embroidery: they're made of exact shapes and flat colours, which is exactly what thread needs. StitchMyPic renders your SVG at the size you stitch it before digitizing, so curves and corners stay crisp however large the design is. Gradients, shadows and transparency effects can't be sewn as such, so they're flattened into solid colour areas.