Photo to embroidery file

Turn a photo into a machine embroidery file — free, in the browser, nothing to install.

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What 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.

Be realistic about photos. Embroidery has no gradients — a stitch is either there or it is not, in one of a handful of thread colours. A photo that converts well is one that already reads as a few blocks of tone: strong light, a clear subject, a simple background. If yours does not, the honest answer is that no converter will make it.

How to convert Photo to embroidery file

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. 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.

Which format does your machine need?

Format	Machines	Stores colours?
PES	Brother and Baby Lock	Yes
DST	Tajima and most industrial multi-needle machines	No
JEF	Janome and Elna	Yes
SEW	older Janome machines — Memory Craft 5700, 8000 and 9000	Yes
EXP	Melco and Bernina	No
VP3	Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff	Yes
XXX	Singer and Compucon	Yes

Not sure? Your machine's manual lists the formats it loads from a USB stick, and the format comparison explains what each one stores.

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.

Related converters

Photo to PES Photo to DST

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.