Product Selection Guide

If you haven’t quite got a handle on the basic concepts, don’t forget to read our Embroidery Software Basics guide.

If you do have a basic understanding, or got here from there, read on!

Thumbnailer – You will want this

Thumbnailer lets you view embroidery designs in your OS so that as you browse around your computer, you can see the designs without having to open them. Who should own Thumbnailer? Every embroiderer. You will have tons of files and need to identify them easily. Thumbnailer is like having a favorite sewing notion, a great pair of thread snips, or a comfy pen: A simple, inexpensive, amazingly handy thing at your service all the time.

The Embrilliance Platform

Before we get specific about product titles, the Embrilliance Platform is one program that every embroiderer owns, should own, and must know about. The platform is a program that opens designs, lets you type lettering, create designs and more, depending on what Embrilliance products you have purchased/licensed. Each Embrilliance Platform program runs in the same universal window, unlocking additional features, tools, and assets to let you create what you want, how you want, when you are ready.

Express Mode

The Embrilliance Platform can be run without purchasing any programs. This is called Express mode. This free mode allows the use of Embrilliance’s .BX installed fonts (almost every major embroidery font designer has .BX available.)  We realized years ago that the world of embroidered lettering was difficult to navigate, both for those selling letter designs as well as those using them. With so many creators releasing collections of individual letter designs that had to be laboriously dragged and dropped into place, we know there had to be a better way. To alleviate embroiderers from suffering through that process, we made a completely free tool to help letter makers map their designs to the keyboard and released the free Express mode to let anyone use those mapped fonts as easily as typing. For this reason, most of the modern embroidery world uses the Embrilliance Platform, even if some never use more than Express.

Essentials – Most Embroiderers should Start with Essentials

Merge an existing design. Colorize it. Resize it (while maintaining proper density). Add keyboard lettering. These are the basic Essentials – just those simple things that every embroiderer needs to do quite often. But there’s so much more to the world of embroidery, and anything that is seen by us as a common everyday task, we handle that with Essentials. There are so many things built into it, you’ll not discover them all.

Examples: Sending designs to wireless machines, or making specialized USB files for older Vikings. Removing overlapped stitches for smoother sewing when multiple designs are merged, or stacked applique is created. Using applique stitches to create cutting files for electronic cutters such as CriCut, Scan ‘n Sew, and Silhouette.  Simulating the stitchout process and being able to insert stops, or remove sections of continuous sewing between stops. Converting design colors to favorite thread brands. Converting to all embroidery formats. Printing templates. Essentials also includes world-class fonts and the ability to use envelopes to reshape lettering for all kinds of projects.

StitchArtist

StitchArtist is our digitizing and creation software. It is the only Embrilliance Platform program to come in upgradable levels. All of the other programs have their own features that don’t overlap, but StitchArtist 1-3 build on one set of expanding features. If you purchase (or upgrade) to StitchArtist Level 3, you have all the functions of Levels 1 and 2. We make it easy to start and grow, with each upgrade only costing the difference between your current level and the level to which you want to upgrade.

Stitch Artist Level 1

When you don’t want to be a fully-skilled digitizer, but do want to add stitches, borders, applique and other elements, then get StitchArtist Level 1. Combining this with Essentials is a powerful tool with lots of easy and creative tools.

StitchArtist Level 2

StitchArtist Level 2 has everything a digitizer needs to create real, complex designs. When you’re ready to learn about crafting custom, complete designs and/or need an inexpensive logo creation tool, StitchArtist Level 2 is for you. You can create just about any design you can imagine with StitchArtist Level 2. If you want to digitize with full control, this is the tool you need. For custom logos, lettering, and detailed designs, the tools in StitchArtist Level 2 are a must.

StitchArtist Level 3

StitchArtist Level 3 is for the power users – those familiar with graphics tools or other production-level digitizing tools and design publishers will be amazed at what’s included. You can publish your own fonts, for example, at no extra cost, and the fonts have digital signatures to give you usage control as the copyright holder. There are also numerous time-saving tools like property stylesheets, creative tools that offer more choices for stitch generation, and higher-level graphical operators for object shaping among many other pro features. StitchArtist Level 3 is designed to be the ultimate in design creation.

Remember, you can upgrade easily through the levels of StitchArtist at the same cost as purchasing the higher level outright. That means as your confidence goes up, you can add to your tools with ease and without being penalized for taking your time to upgrade.

Enthusiast

When you want to do more automated design customizing than what’s provided in Essentials, you need Enthusiast. It adds many utilities from precise positioning and stitch-level editing to our famous automatic Knockdown™ stitching, which flattens the pile of terry or other nap fabric so the design will stand out. There are extra tools for thread palette creation, mirroring in carousel and more.

AlphaTricks

Have you collected embroidery design fonts? Lots of embroiderers have, and know they’re hard to use. AlphaTricks lets you map sets of lettering designs into a keyboard font: You can type with it, size it, colorize and even put it into templates or make subway art. If you have collected .BX-installed stitch fonts, you can also rename those to help organize. Moreover, the recently added Font Library now lets you tag, organize, preview and explore your fonts like never before!

You love fonts? You need AlphaTricks.

Density Repair Kit

For those of you suffering with collections of stock designs, DRK is an automatic way to reduce the stitch count, add flexibility to the design, and ensure sew-ability.  Its patented features relieve stitch count and display ‘inside’ the design so you can see areas of trouble, including a density map, which resembles a weather RADAR look into your design. You can further refine density within individual colors and apply filters to them in order to achieve flatter-sewing relaxed embroidery, when starting with stock designs that are problematic.

One Platform

Remember that these products all work inside the Embrilliance Platform. You purchase a license which consists of a serial number. The program has an option on the Help menu to allow you to add serial numbers easily. Do that and then restart the program, and the additional features will be available.

The products don’t really overlap – they do their own jobs, but all within the platform. There isn’t a Good, Better, Best strategy in place, except for the fact the StitchArtist is available in levels. Therefore, Enthusiast doesn’t do what Essentials does, and vice-versa.

So, Back to Me? What do I get?

If you have a machine and you want to play, get Essentials. You will not go wrong.

If you collect designs, get Thumbnailer. Usually, more experienced design collectors have thousands upon thousands of designs to look through.

Graphic Artist? Get StitchArtist 2 (or StitchArtist Level 3 depending on your budget and skillset), especially if you are making your own artistic designs. If you want to add your work to that of others, probably add Essentials. There are so many things it does, that you’ll find yourself wanting it before long. If you consider yourself advanced in graphic tools, go right to 3. You’ll find that, even though it is more costly, it is a better value because so much is in it.

You are an embroiderer who likes more control? Add Enthusiast to Essentials.

Commercial/stock design user? Get Density Repair Kit (DRK) for design correction of density issues, and Essentials for design sizing, which you won’t understand how you lived without all this time. And our sizing does not kill the fill patterns or create such messes as you may have seen with other products.

AccuQuilt fan? We have a set of shapes, created in concert with AccuQuilt, to allow your embroidery machine to stitch pieces cut with those dies. Also, you can unlock those shapes to resize them and make your own versions, even cut on an electronic cutter.

We hope this helps!

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