When to Purchase Software
Often new embroiderers feel pressure to immediately buy software. You don’t need software to embroider. Your embroidery machine is complete. Software is for your computer so that you can view embroidery designs, edit embroidery designs, or create new embroidery designs (digitizing). Don’t buy software until you completely understand your machine, you know how to hoop and embroider most things, AND you know exactly what you want to do with the software.
What Does Software Do?
If you decide that you want software, then you need to know what you want to do with it. Software allows you to view embroidery designs on a computer, change purchased embroidery designs, or create new embroidery designs. For example, Wilcom Trusizer is made to resize embroidery designs and change file formats. Some software is made to edit embroidery designs. Editing is making changes to purchased embroidery designs. Other software is made to digitize (with or without editing ability). Digitizing is creating a new design from your original artwork.
Realize that not all editing or digitizing software is full featured. Some embroidery software programs only give you a few features. Some embroidery software is modular, so you have to buy the features you want in pre-packed modules.
How to Figure Out Which Software To Purchase
Thankfully, there are 2 simple ways to learn more about software programs you are interested in – Facebook groups and YouTube videos.
I suggest that you join the FaceBook group for any software that you are interested in, as it is really hard to figure out what features are in each software program when you are new. FaceBook groups are useful to answer questions, provide helpful tips, and to provide additional documentation (in the group’s file section).
Most software has official YouTube video tutorials, as well as other videos created by software users. Watching videos allows you to follow along. Some FaceBook groups will provide artwork to that members can watch the corresponding YouTube video and follow along. YouTube also has videos on the features included in the software.
Become Proficient in Using Your Machine First
My suggestion is to first learn your machine. It is very hard to learn your machine and try to learn software. Software has a learning curve, just like learning a new language. So you are likely to run out your software’s 30 day free trial if you try to learn both (new software + new embroidery machine) at the same time. Plus, software can be expensive (and an expensive mistake) if you don’t know what you really want and need to do with it.
Free Software to Download Now
Once you decide what you want to do with software, then you have lots of choices at various price points.
Here are our favorite free software options to download right now. Later, once you have mastered your embroidery machine, we have a list of editing and digitizing software options for you to try.
Embroidery Explorer Plug-In ( download at FreeSierraSoftware.com ):
This is a free thumbnail viewer for Windows computers. It lets your Windows computer view your un-zipped embroidery files as thumbnail images. Without software, your computer can’t view embroidery files. Just as a photo needs photo software so your computer can show you the picture, embroidery files need software to translate a stitch file into an thumbnail image.
My Editor by WingsXP ( download at www.wingsxp.com/index.php/my_editor/ ):
My Editor is a free editing software for Windows computers. Mac computers can also use this software if a Windows emulator is used to run the software.
InkStitch ( download at inkstitch.org/ )
InkStitch is a free digitizing software add on to the free InkScape graphic software. Digitizing software lets you create new embroidery stitch files out of artwork. Copyrights protect other’s artwork, so digitizing should be done using your own artwork, using artwork that allows licensing for embroidery digitizing, or artwork whose copyright has expired.
More Software Choices – Use the 30 Day Free Trials
There are many editing and digitizing software options. Most software programs have 30 day free trials. When trying out software, only download one at a time. Use one program’s 30 day free trial before moving onto the next software’s trial.
Here is our list of embroidery software. We have collected as many titles as possible, along with a summary of the software’s features, and links to the embroidery software.