When you’re starting an embroidery business and need to create designs, you may wonder what the best software for digitizing is. Or if you’re a beginner, you may even want to know what software to use to edit embroidery designs. If you’re looking for best software for editing photos of your embroidery, this article may help you.
There are numerous resources to learn about the top embroidery software. But picking the right one can be difficult, with such a wide range of embroidery software products available. If you’re looking for the best digitizing software for your embroidery business then also look at our article about some great desktop embroidery software applications.
Printavo
Trusted by thousands of print shops in more than 40 countries, Printavo’s embroidery management software is the ideal platform for successfully growing and scaling any type of custom printing or embroidery business.
Ideal for managing your embroidery business remotely, utilizing contract embroidery partners to fulfill orders, run online stores, and improve your quotes and approvals process, and take your business to the next level – Printavo is not design software.
It’s a platform for running an embroidery business.
Pros
Printavo lets embroidery shops:
- Run their business remotely. It’s cloud-based, and accessible anywhere there’s internet.
- Utilize contractors. Send files, quotes, and work orders easily.
- Run online stores. Collect payment, order details, and do fundraisers – all seamlessly integrated into your production management software!
- Improve their approvals process. Quotes and art approvals are friction-free with Printavo – and includes a powerful Quotes Pipeline to boost your sales and revenues.
Printavo hosts the PrintHustlers Conf every year with more than 100 shops from around the world to discuss the most pressing topics & learn from the industry’s brightest.
You also get live support from a Chicago-based support team. Printavo’s engineering team ships updates and improvements to the platform every two weeks.
Cons
While Printavo is not an embroidery-specific art platform, it is for anyone with a custom embroidery business. You’ll want to keep your current digitizing and embroidery art software.
Hatch
A multifaceted set of tools built by Wilcom, Hatch is a powerful embroidery-specific digitizer, organizer, personalizer, and composer.
If you’re try to make images from scratch, digitize your own images, or generally take control of your embroidery machine – Hatch is a good start. Check for compatibility and test carefully (as always).
Pros
Wilcom has crafted one of the most-trusted suites of tools for embroiderers since their software covers most of the challenging aspects of embroidery design and production:
- The Hatch Embroidery Organizer helps with file organization and formatting ($149).
- Hatch Embroidery Personalizer lets users personalize embroidery files ($249).
- Hatch Embroidery Composer is a from-scratch way to build embroidery designs ($499).
- Hatch Embroidery Digitizer lets most at-home users achieve professional-quality digitizations ($1,099).
This means that the entire suite arms new embroidery shops with professional-quality tools from the very start.
Hatch is a widely recognized mainstay in startup and production embroidery businesses. The Hatch Academy allows newcomers to get started quickly, or convert from another software.
Cons
While Hatch is powerful, it’s equally complex to learn and operate for many users.
Wilcom offers training and other ways to help onboard users (check out their YouTube channel), but any shop should expect to devote some time to learning the ins and outs of Hatch’s many tools.
The somewhat high cost of entry may keep some newcomers or casual embroidery shops away, as well. To help, Hatch has pay-as-you-go pricing as low as $1.50.
Chroma
Built by Ricoma, Chroma is an intuitive digitizing and design software for embroidery.
Chroma features three feature-packed tiers: Inspire ($599), Plus ($1299), and Luxe ($1999). Compare features on their website.
Pros
Ricoma’s software is solid and well-regarded across the industry, and the team behind it has stepped up with extensive webinars featuring end-to-end instructions.
Chroma also features auto-digitizing capabilities. While it can’t perfectly digitize everything automatically (yet!), it dramatically reduces the time spent digitizing and can definitely handle simple designs and text with ease.
Cons
For full compatibility and truly professional design capability, you’ll want to invest in the Luxe package. Some consider this a barrier to entry, but the $1,999 price is ultimately a small investment given the high prices that high-end embroidery can command.
Note: this doesn’t mean the other tiers are inferior. They all grant access to Ricoma’s top-tier educational content and set the stage for a strong embroidery design foundation.
SewWhat-Pro and SewArt
S & S Computing produces SewWhat-Pro and SewArt, which I loved when I first got started. They’re affordable and easy to use after watching a few tutorials. (I recommend The Baby’s Booty on YouTube for that.)
SewWhat-Pro is the embroidery editing and customization software of the two, and it offers functions similar to both Embrilliance Essentials plus Enthusiast for less money. I’ve written a SewWhat-Pro embroidery software review of features that gives more in-depth information.
SewArt is an auto-digitizing software from S & S Computing, which works well in many situations. As it is auto-digitizing, you can’t really freehand designs from scratch. However, it’s simple to use and produces decent results for basic images with minimal design editing needed. Auto-digitizing doesn’t take much skill or insight into the art of design creation, so this is good for users who don’t want to spend hundreds of hours learning digitizing theory or a more complex program.
For a fraction of the price of Hatch, this is a good option for beginners! I started here before I realized its limitations and my desire for more intricate and accurate digitizing.
Embrilliance
Embrilliance is arguably the most popular embroidery software, but I don’t necessarily think it the best embroidery software for everyone. It’s one of the few embroidery software for Mac that runs natively, though, so I’d strongly consider this plus if you don’t have a PC.
One great thing about Embrilliance is it comes in different levels that build upon one another and add different embroidery abilities. If you’re never planning on digitizing embroidery files and only want basic editing and customization software, this will be a better choice for you than Hatch. I highly recommend Embrilliance Express for using downloaded .bx fonts, but I personally prefer Hatch for other digitizing tasks.
Now, here’s some basic info on the Embrilliance modules to give you an idea of what they all do. This is just a short overview of the features, and I’d recommend checking out their website for the full descriptions.
- Embrilliance Essentials: basic design customization and editing
- Resize designs appropriately
- Split big designs, merge designs, change thread colors, and delete stitches
- Add basic lettering and make monograms with included fonts
- Make appliques for die-cutting machines (read using a Cricut & embroidery machine together!)
- Embrilliance Enthusiast: advanced editing features
- Create a knock-down stitch and baste hoop
- Save a .png image of a created design
- Embrilliance Stitch Artist 1: basic digitizing
- NOT auto-digitizing and NOT a customizing program. While you don’t have to have Essentials to use this, you will likely want it if you plan to edit or customize designs.
- Embrilliance Stitch Artist 2: adding more digitizing abilities
- Foam embroidery
- Expansion of satin stitch options
- Import SVG files for tracing
- Embrilliance Stitch Artist 3: really only for advanced digitizers
- You have to have this level if you want to create your .bx fonts.
- Embrilliance Express
- This is free and allows you to work with .bx fonts using your keyboard. I highly recommend this over importing font letter files into your program one by one.
Just to note, Embrilliance Essentials and Enthusiast have to be purchased each on their own. However, Stitch Artist 3 gives you levels 1 and 2, and Stitch Artist 2 gives you level 1. But, you still have to purchase Essentials and Enthusiast separately if you want editing capabilities.
One major caveat of Embrilliance for the graphically challenged or embroidery hobbyist is that it does not auto-digitize designs or convert .ttf and .otf fonts into embroidery fonts like Hatch. While it only takes 10-15 minutes to digitize a simple design manually, this is 10-15 minutes that you could have spent embroidering if you used an auto-digitizing program for simple designs.
Just to note, Embrilliance Essentials and Enthusiast have to be purchased each on their own. However, Stitch Artist 3 gives you levels 1 and 2, and Stitch Artist 2 gives you level 1. But, you still have to purchase Essentials and Enthusiast separately if you want editing capabilities.
One major caveat of Embrilliance for the graphically challenged or embroidery hobbyist is that it does not auto-digitize designs or convert .ttf and .otf fonts into embroidery fonts like Hatch. While it only takes 10-15 minutes to digitize a simple design manually, this is 10-15 minutes that you could have spent embroidering if you used an auto-digitizing program for simple designs.
Embrilliance also doesn’t have photo stitch, which is something available in Hatch. Not that I’ve used it more than twice, but just having the option available makes me happy.
The free trial here does not allow you to save files but gives you a demo of the program.
Embird
Developed in Slovakia since 1997, Embird is another option for creating embroidery art.
Their software supports the most common embroidery hoops, as well as exceptionally large amount of embroidery file formats.
Pros
Embird consists of a core platform (Embird Basic) with plugins meant for common embroidery design needs:
- Embird Basic for generating and creating embroidery files
- Embird Studio, a plugin for digitizing
- Sfumato Stitch, a plugin for making embroidery files from photographs
- Font Engine and Iconizer, for making fonts and creating thumbnails respectively
Embird also has a robust library of learning material for their software and embroidery in general.
Cons
Embird does not currently offer live support. Updates may not be frequent enough if your shop is affected by a serious bug.
Conclusion:
If you are a novice user of embroidery software but have an embroidery shop or just run a small business, then you are on the way to success. For those of you who either own a business or are just starting up an embroidery business, there are several things you need to know. And since most of the work is done with software, these tools will be very important in your journey.