There are buttons to allow you to bring in artwork from files. To use
an image file such as a .bmp or .jpeg as a backdrop for your design, click the
“Image…” button.In computer graphics there a two basic ways to create an image and those are called “bitmap” and “vector.”
There are buttons to allow you to bring in artwork from files. To use
an image file such as a .bmp or .jpeg as a backdrop for your design, click the
“Image…” button.
Alternately, you can drag and drop image files, filenames, or simply have copied images from a web browser or other program, then paste onto the design page.
Once you have selected an image, the program will automatically begin a design for you (if you haven’t already), and place that image as a new object in the design. The image is selected and can be scaled or rotated, squished, etc. The images used for backgrounds generally are preferred to be semi-transparent, and that is also set for you. You can do whatever you like with the image at this point to help you begin creating stitch objects on top of it.
Once you begin making other objects, the image itself will lock into place. This means you will not be able to accidentally select or move it while you are creating your design. You can still edit it by selecting it in the Object View. There, you can even unlock it. Generally, once a stitch object has been placed over an image, you don’t want it moving around.
Note: The Image button works for pixel-based images such as photos and scans. Files created using vectors are not pixel-based images, and do not load using this function. See the section on Vectors for information about loading those.
Bitmaps are also known as “raster” images, which might be more technically correct though the terms today are used interchangeably. Bitmap images are composed of different colored dots. Images such as photographs fit into this category. Bitmap representations of art are the preferred type to create stitches from; they come in as background images over which you will create stitch objects.
When using a bitmap image, there is the issue of “resolution” which refers to how many dots called “pixels” are being used. The more pixels, the better the clarity of the image and fewer pixels make for an image that has little stair-steps in it when you zoom in. One might think that more pixels are better. However the program has to do a lot of work while you are drawing your design and an image with a lot of pixels makes it take that much longer to do each step while you are working. So it makes sense to use an image that is not super-duper-hi-resolution.
When deciding what resolution you want to use, or how many pixels should be in the image, it is worth considering how that will match up to the embroidery design itself. In an embroidery design the most common density of a stitch is about 0.4mm or 4 stitch points. This equates to a resolution of 64 DPI (Dots Per Inch) and that means that a typical 4” (100mm) square design would only need an image of 250 pixels on each edge. The normal smartphone will give you thousands of pixels on an edge, so any photo today probably has more than enough resolution for what you need.
We recommend, for simplicity, that you keep your image to around 1000 pixels on either edge. You can go for more if you’re making a super large design, naturally, but otherwise this is a good number. A lot of graphics that exist on the internet are 1024x768 or 800x600 because these are common web sizes. And those images have plenty of resolution for you to create embroidery. If you are making a 14” design, you might want to bump that to 1500-2000 pixels on the widest edge. But remember more is not always better.
Vector files are artwork themselves. These files are brought in as
objects. The user must realize that graphics files contain objects with outline
weights (thickness) and all sorts of color properties that are inapplicable to
an embroidery design. As such, when importing vectors, the outline and its color
are all that are brought in. For some designs, this saves the user the work of
having to re-draw the image.
In addition to the Vector button, you can drag and drop .svg files or filenames then paste onto the design page. In the case of copying from a drawing program, many will simply put a bitmap representation on the clipboard. This is often acceptable, as most digitizers redraw over the image anyway.
Vector images are outlines filled with color – think of a company logo, cartoon, comic or coloring book.
As vector images already have outlines in them, and embroidery objects have outlines too, it might seem reasonable that starting with a vector-based image is better for this purpose. You would have little to draw because the art is already there for you. Simply set the stitch properties and you’re done, right? Well, you can, and we do import them for that purpose, but…
…In actuality that is rarely the case.
Vector artists can do things with their objects, such as ‘overlapping,’ which makes embroidery of the outline completely impossible. Also the shapes can be directly adjacent, which will leave gaps in embroidery. And vector artists jump from color to color and back again very casually. You don’t want to attempt this with embroidery. So, while the allure of using vector files is there, it actually can take more work to make a vector-based image work for you than simply creating objects over top of a bitmap image.
Another common problem using vector based images is that of the original source. There are a lot of clipart companies in the world, and they offer their product in a variety of file formats. When an artist submits an image that was created as a bitmap, the company then uses a program to ‘auto-trace’ the outlines in the image so that you, the customer, can get your ‘vector’ version of it as an EMF or WMF or AI file, etc. Those files are almost universally the worst thing to use for the reason that they contain as many as one hundred times the number of outline nodes as needed, and they are often ‘line’ nodes, which means the stitches that will be generated will have to stop at each node.
Given these inherent difficulties, Level 3 has added features that let you overcome these problems.
However, for all these reasons we suggest you always use a bitmap picture - .bmp, .jpeg, etc. That is unless you yourself are the artist or whoever is creating the vector files as the original format and have done so with embroidery design in mind.
TrueType fonts exist as single-color outlines in your computer. As
many logos began life as a TrueType font, you may want to use one as the basis
for your design. There are many free-to-use fonts available on the internet,
although some require payment if you use them. Check the font’s license to be
sure, especially in commercial circumstances. For this purpose, let’s assume you
have either permission or freely licensed fonts.
When you select text in a given font, the computer provides that in outline form. Each outline is given as an object. For example the lower-case letter ‘i’ will usually have two objects; one for the dot and one for the stroke. You can use these outlines as stitch types anyway you want. You can make them outline designs by applying a run, or you could use the art for satin stitches. You could even make them huge and set them to a fill, cross stitch or applique. It’s just a piece of art as if you had drawn it yourself.
You may use the drawing tools in the program to create your own art. There are enough tools there to do it, however, graphics packages will offer more flexibility in terms of things like pen nibs and gradient colors, but those are very different in embroidery when compared to graphics. Therefore the drawing tools in this program are geared toward stitch generation – you are literally drawing with stitch-generating shapes, making you a Stitch Artist.