PDF to embroidery file
Turn a PDF into a stitch file your machine reads. What survives, what does not, and what it costs. Every stitch on screen before you pay.
What a PDF gives the machine
A PDF is a document, not an image, and that is the useful part: the artwork inside it is usually still vector. The engine reads the vector artwork out of the file and stitches it directly, with no tracing at all — the same quality as an SVG, from a file almost everyone can produce.
What goes wrong with a PDF
- A PDF can hold a placed photograph instead of drawn artwork. Then the engine says «This file holds a placed image rather than vector artwork. Send the PNG or JPG instead.» — and it is right, because there is nothing vector in there to use.
- Live text is skipped: «convert it to outlines to have it stitched». A PDF made from Word, Canva or Google Docs is almost always live text.
- Gradients become one flat colour. The engine says it out loud, because a machine has whole threads and nothing in between — a fade cannot be sewn, only chosen.
Do this first
Ask for the PDF the print shop uses, not the one made for e-mail. A print PDF keeps the vector artwork; a compressed one usually keeps a picture of it instead.
Which file comes out
Pick the one your machine reads — DST, PES, JEF, VP3, EXP or XXX — or take the SVG, which is the drawing itself. The same stitches come out in all of them, so changing machine is a different download, not a new job.
What it costs
One file is $9, with no account. From $0.20 a file on a yearly plan. You see the whole mark, at the size you asked for, before you pay for anything.
- Can I convert a PDF to DST?
- Yes, if the PDF holds vector artwork — which most do. Drop it in the workshop and the shapes are used directly, with no tracing.
- My PDF came back empty. Why?
- It holds a placed image rather than drawn artwork, or it is live text. The workshop says which one, and both have a fix that takes a minute in the program the file came from.
- Is a PDF as good as an SVG?
- For our purposes, yes — as long as the artwork inside is vector. Both skip the tracing step entirely.
Nobody corrects the file afterwards. What is on screen is what the machine gets, and it is worked out in seconds.
Other files you can send
Measured in the workshop, not quoted from a brochure.