Image to DST

Turning an image into a DST file is five steps, and only one of them is ours. The rest are decisions about your image that you can make before anybody digitizes anything — and the biggest one is visible in the image itself: how many separate pieces it breaks into.

How to convert an image to a DST file

1. Find the best copy of the image. The file it was exported from beats the export, and a clean PNG beats a compressed JPEG. If you have an SVG, a PDF or an Illustrator file, send that.
2. Decide the stitched width in millimetres, and what it goes on. A left-chest logo and a jacket back are two different files, not one file scaled.
3. Run the free check. It reads the image at that width and reports the colour count and the thinnest line, which decides the package: Basic up to 5 colours and 100 mm, Standard up to 6 and 130 mm.
4. Order, and we digitize it. The engine drafts the stitch plan, a digitizer corrects and approves it. You get the DST, a PES, a stitch simulation and the thread list — the DST cannot carry colours, so the list says which thread goes at each stop.
5. Open the DST before you sew it. The DST file viewer shows its size, stitches and colour stops in your browser, then sew a test on scrap of the real fabric.

Four images, four DST files

These are the DSTs our engine produced for four sample images, all at about 90 mm wide, read back from the delivered files:

Read down the shapes and trims columns: in every run, trims are the shapes minus one. Every shape is trimmed when it is finished so no thread runs across the design, so each extra piece costs a trim, and each trim costs machine time and a thread tail to tidy. Stitches tell a different story — they follow filled area, which is why the solid fox has the most and the airy monogram the fewest.

So before you order, look at your image the way a machine will: count the islands. A logo of a few solid shapes sews quickly; scattered dots, thin outlines broken into segments and small separate letters each add a trim. If the piece count is high and the detail does not matter at that size, simplifying it is the cheapest change you can make.

What comes back

A DST, which opens on Tajima and most other commercial machines, and a PES for Brother and Baby Lock, from $9.99; JEF, EXP and VP3 as well from $14.99. Each comes with the thread list and the stitch simulation. If your image is a PNG, the PNG to DST page shows what it has to contain; for a JPEG, the JPG to DST page shows what compression adds; for a vector, see SVG, PDF or AI to DST.

Delivery takes 1–3 business days, most orders the same day.

Questions

Can I convert an image to DST for free?

Free converters will write a DST from any image, because writing the file is easy. They trace colour regions into fill and leave the rest at defaults — stitch direction, underlay, the order shapes are sewn in — which is what decides whether the file sews cleanly. The free check on our home page measures your image at your size before you pay; a digitized DST checked by a person starts at $9.99.

What is a DST file?

Tajima's embroidery format, and the one most commercial machines open: a list of needle movements, colour stops, jumps and trims. It has no picture inside it and no colours, only the points where the machine stops for a new thread. You can open one in our DST file viewer to see every stitch.

How long will my design take to sew?

Two numbers decide it: stitches, which follow how much area is filled, and trims, which follow how many separate pieces the design breaks into. A monogram with half the stitches of a logo can still take longer if it is in seventy pieces. The table on this page shows four real files.

Can I turn a photo into a DST?

Only by redrawing it as flat shapes first, which is done by hand. Shading becomes solid areas of thread, so a photo turns into a simplified drawing of itself before it becomes stitches.

My machine is not a Tajima. Do I still want DST?

Most commercial and multi-needle machines read DST. Home machines usually want their own format; every package includes PES as well, and Standard and above add JEF, EXP and VP3. The file formats page lists which machine reads which.

Check your image freeSee pricing

The picture above is a stitch simulation from our own engine on rule set 1.3, not a photograph. Shapes are counted in each run's stitch plan; sizes, stops and stitch counts are read from the delivered DST with pyembroidery 1.5.1.