I do a lot of machine embroidery. I really like the idea of designing my own embroidery designs. over the course of the past 6 months I have searched and downloaded many 30 day trials of embroidery digitizing software. Most of them were great but really much too expensive for me. In fact I think for a software program to be priced in the $1K+ range is overkill for mark-up on the part of the seller.
One of the most expensive programs out there that is pushed on to home embroidery sewers is MasterWorks by Design Gallery. They are in the $1500 and up range. That is the price of one CD program disk. If they priced it more in the $50 range they would probably make more money, but no they want it all and they want it from home users. Don't get me wrong, the program is good but it was still not perfect. I used it to design my Steelers headband (you can see it here and how I made it too) and the program saw the "t" as an "l" and did the stars all wrong. I had to remove the wording by hand and redo the font. For a $1500 program it failed to do a simple job.
So on went my search for a better program. Then I found Digitize n' Stitch by Amazing Designs and it has performed much better. It doesn't have the bells and whistles that MasterWorks has but it recognizes pictures better. I used it to create the Habitat logo seen here. It only took 15 minutes and that included setting up and sewing out the pattern. I didn't have to change a thing. Digitize n' Stitch can be found priced anywhere from $249 down to $149. If you see it priced cheaper than $149 let me know by commenting because I still have 20 days left to go on my free 30 day trial and I am shopping around for the best price. Amazing Designs offers 30 day free trials on most of their software.
8 comments:
Thank you for your information I am researching and searching for a digitizing software for my baby lock. I want something that is not so expensive but works well.
Since I wrote the blog post I have had some issues with the Digitize N' Stitch software. I am now looking at Embroidery Magic II by Pantogram. I found it and 2 other software programs with it in a bundle for $125.00 so I might go with that one. I will write a follow up post with the results of my search and what I end up getting.
I am new to machine embroidery. My dilemma is that I purchased Design Gallery's CardWorks with the machine several years ago and never used it. In the meantime, we bought new computers with Windows Vista and now the CardWorks is incompatible with Vista!
I am curious about the 30-day free trials. A little scared to try them.
What with buying new hoops and a supply of beautiful threads - not to mention more fabric - I see this as an expensive hobby!
To Anonymous, I had something similar. The Babylock Esante was programed to work with Windows XP and when I got a new laptop with Vista they would not talk to each other. I had to go to the Babylock website and download the Vista upgrade (free of course) for the embroidery machine.
In your case just go to Design Gallery and see if they have updated downloads you can install in Cardworks. In reality Vista and XP are still compatible so there should not be that much of a problem. Now Windows 7 is another issue altogether.
Keep in mind that you can always download either free or purchased designs for your machine without having to design your own.
For all of you that are curious, I ended up with Embroidery Magic II by Pantogram. I found it for $99 and it came with 2 more disks with over 20,000 embroidery designs. Not a bad deal.
Hi, I was wondering if you still rate this product. I have been looking around the internet to find a reasonable priced product that works. I don't seem to be able to find anywhere that I can download a free trial of this product despite trawling the internet for over 4 hours last night.
Many thanks, Caroline :-)
Caroline, here is a link to the free digitizing software downloads. I am sure you will find something there. Free digitizing software downloads
I forgot to add, the link for the Masterworks trial CD is at www.designersgallerysoftware.com
hi im new here but i found Embroidery Magic II at amazon for 83 bux thought it might save someone sum bux good luk
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