Turn a picture into stitches

Digitizing means turning a picture into stitch instructions. Lilo can do the whole thing in one go. This is called Auto digitize.

Open a picture#

Use Digitize a picture… on Home, or Open image… in the left panel. You can also drop a PNG, JPG, WEBP or SVG file onto the canvas.

Flat, high-contrast pictures work best: a logo, a crest, a simple drawing. Photos with soft shading make messy embroidery, because thread cannot blend like pixels do.

The settings, top to bottom#

• Colours is how many thread colours to use, from 2 to 12. Fewer colours mean fewer thread changes and a faster sew. Start with the number of colours you see.
• Size (mm) is the width and height of the finished design. Leave one box on auto and Lilo keeps the shape. Small details drop out below about 80 mm for fine serif logos, so size up if the hairlines vanish.
• Smallest region drops tiny specks. A region smaller than this many square millimetres is merged away. Raise it if you see dust-like dots.
• Background is Remove or Keep. Remove treats the picture's background colour as empty cloth. Choose Keep if the background is part of the design.
• Thread brand picks the thread range to match against. Read Thread brands and matching.
• Quality, Thread weight and Fabric make up the Sewing setup. Read Standard or Premium.
• Use my threads matches colours to the spools you own first. Read My Threads.

Press Digitize to run it again after you change a setting.

What Lilo does#

1. It shrinks the picture and removes the background.
2. It reduces the picture to your chosen number of colours.
3. It snaps each colour to the nearest real thread.
4. It traces the shapes.
5. It decides how to stitch each shape. Thin lines become a running stitch. Medium shapes become satin columns. Wide shapes become fills with underlay.
6. It orders the shapes so the machine jumps as little as possible.

Everything it makes is editable. Select any shape and change it.

If the result looks wrong#

• Too many colours: lower Colours.
• Missing thin lines: make the design larger, or choose Premium, which sews fine strokes as narrow satin.
• Messy specks: raise Smallest region.
• Wrong colours: change the thread in the left panel after selecting a shape, or use the Colours tab in the sequencer to merge or swap.

When you want control over which parts get stitched, use Click to stitch.