Dear Sewing.Mach-Embroider participants:
I'm posting and monitoring this group for a relative that bought a new Husq.Viking I with the cabinet and all of the accessories. She even bought some add on packages for sizing and fonts, but nothing for digitizing photos, pcpaint images or simpler designs.
She is completely dependent on downloads from several popular sites that provide free designs and struggles with their compatibility and quirks.
OK, the Husq.Viking is a very cool machine with its big LCD display, but beyond text fonts and canned designs, it doesn't allow for manual entry of designs from its own screen ???...... Is this correct?
I get the feeling that it's like she bought a CD player that only plays CDs from one supplier.
She's using this for fun and has no intention of producing stitchwork for anyone beyond family and friends. The Disney designs seem to be locked up by Brother and simple things like Thomas the Tank Engine don't seem to exist?
I'm pretty expert with photo editing and want to help her. Legalities aside, is it just a matter of scanning in the desired image, down-sampling the resolution and color palette and opening the resulting JPEG or BMP file with a digitizing program for conversion to Husq's input language? If so, what program works best with her Husq. and can I use a demo version to prove this scan-downsample-color reduction technique and give her a Husq. ready file to stitch?
She's willing to spend a couple of hundred on a software package that does the job, but doesn't want to pay for stuff and find out that the cheap way wasn't the right way. Should she stay with Husq's expensive digitizing software rather than buy something like Embird?
Finally, what's the best way to track designs on her hard disk. Is there a utility that shows the designs as thumbnails through Windows Explorer. If so, what are these programs, what do they cost and which is the best for a Husq.Viking user?
All advice is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely, Eric Wayne, PA