"Digitizing"
Before your logo or text can be embroidered on a garment, it must first be turned into an embroidery design. Today's embroidery machines are very smart and sophisticated, but they can't do anything with a graphic image directly. What they need is a file, in a format they can read, that tells them exactly where to place stitches. This is where the digitizer comes in. Digitizing requires a specialized software package that can create these embroidery files for the machine. 
The software is quite expensive, and can require a considerable amount of time to learn and master.
How this works is simple. The customer sends his logo art to the digitizer (me). Normally I can work with most image files, where jpg, bmp, and gif files are the most common. If the image is sent in a form other than a digital image, the image must first be scanned to create a digital image file. The image is then imported into the digitizing program and the work begins. Depending on complexity, the digitizing process could take as little as an hour, or it could take up to 8 hours. Once completed, we now have an embroidery file that the machine can read. It will know exactly where to place stitches, one at a time, on whatever garment has been selected for the embroidery.
Naturally, the better the original art work, the better the completed design will be. Keep this in mind when sending art work to me for a quote. It's also important to note that some graphics are simply too detailed, or have too many colors, to be able to create a workable embroidery design. A lot can be done with today's software and embroidery machines, but there are limitations. There are times when things must be simplified to some extent before the design can be created. Size makes a difference too. For example, very tiny letters do not sew well. Letters smaller than 1/4 inch just don't work well at all. I will work with you to resolve any issues that would affect the final outcome. Not only should the design look good, but it must sew out well. Otherwise the entire process is a waste of time. The end result, what it looks like on the garment, is what's most important.
One other thing. If you know what the design will be embroidered on, let me know. It can make a difference in how the design is created. Designs do not always sew the same on every type of fabric.
