Digitizing Made Easy: Create Custom Embroidery Designs Like a Pro Paperback – January 2, 2008

My wife and I have been using digitizing software for the past 10 years, but generally for just adding text and tweaking a few things on residential equipment. We moved into the commercial market this year and have much more advanced software. We were hoping this book would provide better insight into what we should consider when doing professional quality punching.Although this book isn't a full comprehensive encyclopedia that tells you everything you need to know - which there is no such book, it is quite good. It really gives you an insight into the basics of digitizing. Even though it's Christmas weekend as I write this review, we plan on doing some of the suggested samples from the book to learn more about step stitch patterns.The book inspired me to try some things I wouldn't have on my own. I scanned a piece of wallpaper border we have in our bathroom. My wife wants to embroider the design onto a towel from a portion of the wallpaper. I scanned it, imported it as a background into our software and then manually digitized on top of it using some of the advice in the book. Stitched it out and was surprised at how it turned out. We put a step stitch background behind two objects and want to make some changes to these now. The book recommended making samples to figure out what we can do with step stitches. This looks fun and interesting.I'd recommend this book to anyone like ourselves!

This book is easy to understand and I am enjoying it as an excellent resource along with my digitizing software and lessons. It explains the basics and helps with understanding the rules of stitches...types, design elements, distortion, underlay...along with other tips and hints. Included is a CD ROM of 25 designs. It is not a manual to teach you how to use your software, it is a great resource to enhance your learning to digitize using software. You should have some basic knowledge of your own software, and this will help you understand areas you may be having difficulty with.

Though there are new programs available, such as the terrific Embrilliance suite, some things never change, and this book is proof. This book is like a text book for John Deer's extremely helpful, professional videos, one series for each of the major software programs, which can be found on his Digitizing Made Easy website. If you are at all comfortable using any graphics program, you are way ahead of the game, but as a novice, I was really struggling until I connected the book with the videos for the specific software product I just purchased. It is tremendously helpful to have both this book and those videos open while you are in front of your program. Expensive, time-consuming classes might be available at your local shop, but shops are getting harder to find, and they don't sell my embroidery machine, which is the Singer XL-580, a terrific machine for under $1000.00. A shop owner would have a hard time selling machines for $7,000-$15,000 if her customers had the chance to compare them side by side with the Singer 580, but that's a story for another review. John Deer grew up in the embroidery industry and knows it inside out, from the days of hand-punched paper patterns to the present. This is who you want to teach you to digitize.

I was very hesitant to purchase this book because of some of the negative reviews. However, a family member suggested that I get the book to help out with my new found desire of digitizing. She actually suggested that I get it BEFORE I get a program, but I did not wait on the program because I wanted to start testing designs right away. That is probably why I found this book helpful. There is a lot of terminology and descriptions in the book that someone that has very little knowledge of embroidery would find extremely confusing. However, since I had already been playing with my program and trying to figure things out before I got this book... it was easier for me to understand what was going on. Of course, if you have been embroidery for any amount of time then you will understand a lot of what is being said.I want to make it clear that I did not start embroidering until May 2015... and I am writing this review in the beginning of June 2015. So, it does not take too long to start learning the process. I agree with what some of the other reviews say about needing to know a little about digitizing to understand this book, but there are a lot of free demos out there that you can try out before you get this book and it would most likely help out. I highly doubt that you will be able to get this book and be able to figure out how to digitize without trying it with some kind of software. All digitizing of embroidery designs will require software and not just a regular program that comes on your computer. (I saw questions like that when I was researching embroidery machines so I thought I would mention it.)Something else that is extremely important that was mentioned in this book is that many people tend to buy a program that the manufacturer of their machine tells them to use. After looking at and testing many different programs, I can comfortably say that some of the programs by the machine manufacturers are a huge rip off. They are limited on what they can do and often times are triple the price of a different software program. So, make sure to shop around for whatever you are looking for so you don't end up having to buy upgrades, additional plug-ins, or the completely wrong software for your work.I have gone back to this book after digitizing a design (I jumped right into super hard designs so I am having more problems than someone who would probably start with something simple) and have found a lot of the information helpful. My first attempt was pretty good and now I'm working on just fixing a few problems here and there with the suggestions in the book. I agree that the auto-digitizing features on most programs are not the best, but they are a good start if you have never digitized before. If the "by hand" part of things in this book is confusing or overwhelming, then try out an auto-digitizing feature and go from there. I spend hours on a design before I even get to test it the first time around so this process isn't something that you will be able to do in just a few minutes!