When you buy an Embroidery Machine you have this wonderful tool that will magically fill all your fabrics and clothes with beautiful embroidery designs. At first you will be happy working with whatever is available with your machine in addition to the designs you can buy from online sellers. But after some time you yearn to do more. Maybe you want to start an embroidery business or simply want to do customized designs on your own clothes.
You want to create your designs, edit them and make them your own and embroider with those customized designs. You can too. With the help of Embroidery software programs. Here are the available ones which are also hugely popular and used by thousands of embroidery enthusiasts and experts.
There are different types of software programs – Editing programs to resize or merge designs and convert the designs into different formats; Lettering programs to create lettering ready to be embroidered the way you want; Digitizing programs which is useful in digitizing images that you scan and feed into the program, ready to be embroidered.
To choose the best software program is not so easy but luckily most of them have trial versions. First of all, you have to decide on the purpose and what you want from the program. And also the skill you have in using a computer. Most programs have a learning curve and you will have to make an effort to learn the basics and realize that you can become an expert only after several hours spend tinkering with it.
The Embroidery Software Programs
Embrilliance
This is a very popular choice for digitizing and editing designs, especially for lettering.
You can start by getting the Embrilliance Express (free) which is a lettering program which uses BX fonts. You can test out this free version but it is limited in its capabilities. You can view designs and convert formats and do some editing. It can create lettering files but you cannot open files to add lettering to them and you cannot save anything. You will have to upgrade the version to Embrilliance Essentials (the next level) to be able to merge designs or resize designs.
Embrilliance Essentials module is the full basic editing module, which you will have to pay for. Embrilliance works great on Mac books and Windows PCs. You can merge designs, resize them, resizing, removing overlapped areas, and manipulate text . You can buy BX fonts from other sources and install them and use them on this platform. Enthusiasts is another module with the knockdown stitch and make intertwined fonts easily. They also comes with a 90 day money back guarantee, as per their website.Â
For the ability to see the actual design (as thumbnails) on a flash drive or USB you will have to buy a Thumbnailer. It helps in organizing and finding your designs easily.
Facebook groups with several helpful members answering each and every one of your queries is definitely a boon to all the inexperienced but eager to learn new Embrilliance owners. You can find one such group here. In YouTube you can search for Embrilliance tutorials or Embrilliance BX fonts and you will get to see and learn from many video tutorials.
Checkout the website of Embrilliance Embroidery Software here.; They have a youtube channel which is also useful
Embird
It is a good Editing software with many modules. You can check it out using a 30 day trial (0r 100 uses) for the full software and buy only the modules you want.
Stitch artist is their popular digitizing module. Font engine is their letter creating module. As per their website ” Embird Font Engine combines embroidery lettering tool and graphics in vector file format. It creates embroidery lettering from common Windows fonts in TrueType and OpenType format. It is also possible to use it with 3rd party ready-made embroidery alphabets” – so you can use the fonts you have in your computer already with this software.
They also have Studio (Digitizing software) Iconizer ( to see thumbnails of the designs), and Cross stitch module.Â
The Facebook groups for this software are active and very helpful with all your doubts. You can also buy tutorials to use the software.
Checkout their products here.
Sew What Pro
Cost less that $100, so it is inexpensive which is its greatest advantage, along with its capabilities, of course. It is available to try on a 28 day trial basis. They have a Facebook group with many super active users responding to your queries. Learning how to use it is a breeze with the many YouTube videos available. Subsequent Updates are all free. It is a great user friendly program to edit designs program with many dedicated users who vouch for the usability of this software program. It is great . But one disadvantage is that if you own a Mac you will need to use another program to use it. ( Windows Emulator)
Checkout more details on Sewwhat pro here.
Hatch Embroidery
This is another great program (by Wilcom International) that is easy to use – many experts vouch for it. They have great fonts available – it comes with the program. It also comes with a free 30 day trial for the full functional software. And great customer support from the site and through Facebook groups. Several Youtube videos are also available online teaching you how to use the program.
Check it out here.
Floriani Softwares
Floriani Total Control-U software, Floriani Lettering software are all powerful softwares with many features and great digitizing capabilities. They are available on a one time fee (with free subsequent updates)
Checkout more details here.Â
Other embroidery software programs to check out.
Stitch Buddy is a very inexpensive program and does a great job of modifying and editing embroidery designs the way you want it. It is for Macs and devices with iOS ie you can do all these on your iPad and iPhones also.Â
Sew Art is another cost effective program. They have a 30 days free trial version.
My Editor is a free tool and you can view and modify embroidery files and then save them in any embroidery file formats with this.But as a free tool this one has many limitations, understandably.
BES Lettering is software program from the sewing machine brand Brother – you can easily create designs and then edit them as well. It also comes with a wireless upgrade kit for many Brother machines and you can transfer the designs wirelessly to the machine with it.
Embroideryware is a very affordable embroidery digitizing software. Â If you grab the free trail version of EmbroideryWare you can use all the features of the program for 30 days. Check it out here.
Whichever software program you choose, ensure that they give you good after sales customer service with an active Facebook group or page with many involved members who can clear your doubts, a customer care number or email to respond to your technical difficulties and many you tube videos made by experts to teach you how to use the software.
Related posts : How to start an embroidery business ; Machine Embroidery : An overview for beginners.
