So you're just sending it to a embroidery shop and they vectorize it and send it back? Correct? The embroidery software may not be the key to it then. They may just have some one like Vector Doctor working for them. I thought that maybe it was something special about the software.
No, what makes embroidery software better is that we have more digitizing tools.
We aren't auto tracing anything.
Embroidery objects are now done like vector objects. The only difference that instead of knowing strokes, fills etc embroidery objects know stitch angles, type of stitches, stitch count, underlay, density etc.
In the picture called Drawing Tools, all the fly outs represent drawing tools that I have available in my embroidery program for digitizing, the first one is like the reshape tool in Corel, all of which can be converted to vector objects. Vector Conversion picture shows the option option of where to convert it the embroidery object to a vector object. Vector Object picture shows it as a vector object. That's all one program by the way. It just has two parts, one is the design interface which at this point in time is the full version of Corel x5 built right into the program and the embroidery interface, which is what is show in the first two pictures.
Contrary to popular opinion, you can pull vectors from embroidery objects, it all depends on the price point of your software. Now if you use a DST file, that's where it's more like auto digitizing as a DST file (or other embroidery file) is more like a JPG compared to the native EMB files that I deal with. DST files, which is the most universal file format out there that most machines accept, does not retain color memory. So unless there is a stitch chart or a picture of the original logo with the correct colors, that will have to be handled later.
Now if you think about it, it would make sense that embroidery programs would have better drawing tools. 90% of the files that I get are JPG, I just got 8 files today from various S101 members for digitizing that were JPG, one was even a photo of a previously done embroidery pattern. Tracing is what these programs were designed to do long before they started to treat the objects as vector objects. This is not auto-tracing. I hand trace it, very much like Vector Doctor, to create embroidery files from JPG and even vectors. All the tools in that first picture are manual digitizing tools, the last flyout is true manual in every sense of the word as one click means one needle penetration.
I can use one program to trace a picture to an embroidery file and then convert that file to a vector object to export either as an Ai, CDR, EPS or whatever your poison is. Now it all depends on how sophisticated your software is, but I can do it all through the one program in the pictures that you see.
So the long and short of it, there is something special about embroidery software. However, you have to pay in order to have the capabilities of all this, but make no mistake, embroidery software can do all of this.
