HoopReady
JPG to DST
A JPEG will convert to DST as readily as anything else. The difference is that a JPEG is the only common input whose file format changes what the design appears to contain: the compression that makes it small also invents faint colour around every hard edge, and a checker counting colours counts those too. Below is our own checker, measuring one design saved four ways.
The same design, saved four ways
One monogram, exported once and then saved as a JPEG at three quality settings, each sent through the free check at 90 mm on rule set 1.3. Nothing about the design changed between rows — only the file format did.
| File | Size | Colors measured | Thinnest line | Gradient share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PNG, as exported | 973 KB | 3 | 0.78 mm | 0 |
| JPEG, quality 90 | 164 KB | 3 | 0.78 mm | 0 |
| JPEG, quality 60 | 76 KB | 3 | 0.75 mm | 0.002 |
| JPEG, quality 30 | 55 KB | 4 | 0.75 mm | 0.008 |
Read the last two columns together. Quality 90 is indistinguishable from the original by every measure. Quality 60 costs 0.03 mm off the thinnest line and lifts the gradient share off zero — the checker has started to see soft edges where the artwork has hard ones. Quality 30 adds a whole colour: #91aa89, an off-white haze around the strokes that is in none of the other rows and was never drawn.
What that costs you
The colour count is not a curiosity: it decides which package your design needs, and Basic stops at 5 thread colours. A design that measures one colour over because of compression is a design we would quote a tier higher, for a colour that does not exist. The thinnest line matters the same way — it is what decides whether a shape has to be redrawn before it can be stitched at all.
The fix is not clever: go back to whatever the JPEG was exported from and export again at high quality, or send a PNG. Converting the JPEG to PNG afterwards does nothing, because the haze is already in the pixels. And the check is free and runs before you pay, so the whole of this costs you one more upload.
Where the JPEG is not the problem
Compression is an honest thing to blame only when the artwork is flat to begin with. If the original is a photograph, a gradient, or a picture of something already embroidered, the format is not what stands in the way — the design is, and it needs redrawing rather than re-exporting. What a design has to contain before it can become stitches, and why a DST holds no colour at all, are both on the PNG to DST page.
Delivery takes 1–3 business days, most orders the same day.
Questions
- Is a JPEG good enough to digitize from?
- Usually yes, and the exceptions are measurable rather than a matter of taste. A JPEG saved at high quality measured exactly what the original PNG did in our own test — same 3 colours, same 0.78 mm thinnest line. A heavily compressed one did not. If the file came straight out of a camera roll or has been mailed around a few times, send the best copy you can find and let the free check answer rather than guessing.
- Why would compression add a colour that is not in my logo?
- JPEG stores an approximation of blocks of pixels rather than the pixels themselves, and around a hard edge that approximation overshoots — a faint halo a few pixels wide. Your eye reads it as the background. A checker counting distinct colours reads it as a colour. In the test below it arrived as #91aa89, a shade nobody drew.
- Does that extra colour cost me money?
- It can, which is the only reason this page exists. The package you need is decided by the colour count, and Basic stops at 5. A five-colour logo that measures six because of compression is a design we would quote one tier up. The free check runs before payment precisely so this gets caught while it is still free to fix — re-export from the original and check again.
- Should I convert my JPEG to a PNG before sending it?
- It changes nothing. Saving a JPEG as a PNG preserves the compression artefacts perfectly; it does not undo them. What helps is going back to whatever the JPEG was made from — the design file, the vector, the original export — and saving that instead.
- My logo is a photograph of an embroidered patch. Can you work from that?
- No. A photograph carries shadow, fabric texture and lighting as colour, and the check will read all of it. What we need is the artwork, or failing that a flat drawing of it. This is a different problem from compression and no amount of quality setting fixes it.
Check your file freePrices and terms
Every number in the table is a real answer from the same checker the site runs, recorded by web/tools/format_checks.py into format-checks.json at 90 mm on rule set 1.3. Measurements in millimetres scale with the width you order, so a different width gives different numbers for the same file.