Photo to DST
Turn a photo into a stitch-ready DST file for Tajima and most industrial multi-needle machines — free, in the browser, nothing to install.
Convert now — no account neededWhat to know about starting from a photo
A photo is the hardest source there is. It has thousands of colours and no hard edges, and thread has neither — every embroidered photo is really a poster-style reduction to a handful of flat colours.
Photo to DST specifically
Two reductions, and only one of them is reversible. The photo is posterised to a few flat tones, which is a choice you make and can redo; then DST discards the colours entirely, which it does regardless. Write the tone sequence down from the exported list — with a photo the order matters more than usual, because light and dark in the wrong sequence stops reading as a face at all.
How to convert Photo to DST
- Upload your photo. Expect to cut to somewhere between four and eight colours and to lose the background entirely. Faces and pets work best when the subject fills the frame; a group shot at 100mm wide will not survive the reduction.
- Set the finished size. Work in millimetres and set it before you judge anything else — every decision about detail depends on how big the design will be. Detail that survives at 150mm disappears at 60mm.
- Reduce the colours. Each colour is a thread change on the machine. Pick the fewest that still read as your artwork.
- Check the preview, then export as DST. The stitch preview plays the design in the order the machine will sew it, so you can catch problems before there is thread in the hoop.
About the DST format
DST is the native format for Tajima and most industrial multi-needle machines. DST is the universal format — if you are sending a design to a shop and do not know their machine, send DST. The trade-off is that it stores no thread colours at all, only the stops between them, so the operator sets the threads. We write a thread sequence list alongside the file so you can pass the colour order on.
What makes the difference to the result
Digitizing is not tracing. The converter decides how each region gets filled, which direction the stitches run, where the underlay goes and how much to compensate for the fabric pulling the design in as it sews. Those decisions are what separate a design that stitches cleanly from one that puckers, gaps at the edges or takes twice as long as it should.
- Size before everything. A shape narrower than about 1.2mm cannot be stitched as its own satin column; it has to be widened or dropped.
- Fewer colours, better result. Every extra colour is a thread change, a trim and a chance for registration to drift.
- Flat beats subtle. Gradients, glows and soft shadows have no equivalent in thread and become banding.
- Check the stitch order. The simulator plays it back so you can see the sequence before you sew it.
Common questions
How do I keep track of colours for an embroidered photo in DST?
From the exported thread sequence list, and it matters more here than anywhere else. A photo is already reduced to a few flat tones; if those tones are loaded in the wrong order, the design stops reading as a face rather than just looking slightly off.
Can a photo really be embroidered?
It can be reduced to a stitchable design, but not reproduced. Thread has no gradients, so every embroidered photo is a poster-style reduction to four to eight flat tones. Photos that work already read as blocks of light and dark, with a clear subject filling the frame.
Does DST keep my thread colours?
No, and no converter can change that — the format has nowhere to put them. A DST records stitches and the stops between them, so the operator loads the threads. Every DST exported here comes with a thread sequence list naming the colours in stitching order.
Why do embroidery shops ask for DST?
Because it loads on almost anything. DST carries nothing brand-specific, which is exactly why nearly every machine reads it, and shops assign thread from their own stock regardless of what a file claims.
What is actually inside a DST file?
A fixed 512-byte header holding the design name, the stitch and colour-change counts and the design's extents, then three bytes per stitch. That is the whole format, which is both why it is so portable and why it has nowhere to record a colour.
Related converters
Already have an embroidery file in the wrong format? That is a different job — no digitizing needed, just a re-encode. Use the embroidery file converter. Working with text rather than artwork? Browse the embroidery fonts.