Stitch Era - vector and thread color: Difference between revisions
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[[image:stitch-era-colors-6.png|frame|none|Optimize needles]] | [[image:stitch-era-colors-6.png|frame|none|Optimize needles]] | ||
As you can see, we got all colors nicely ordered, except that we have two dark greys and we will deal with this without going back to vector art. | As you can see, we got all colors nicely ordered, except that we have two dark greys and two dark red variants and we will deal with this without going back to vector art. | ||
'''Order stitch sections by needles (optional!)''' | '''Order stitch sections by needles (optional!)''' | ||
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; Merge needles | ; Merge needles | ||
As you can see in the following picture, we got a lonely running stitch (blame on me that uses Needle 18). It should have used needle 13 (same color as the fill). To fix that, just do the | As you can see in the following picture, we got a lonely running stitch (blame on me that uses Needle 18). It should have used needle 13 (same color as the fill). To fix that, just do the following. | ||
* Select the section (if it is not already) | * Select the section (if it is not already) | ||
* Click on the needle in the palette, e.g. in our case 13. | * Click on the needle in the palette, e.g. in our case 13. |
Revision as of 00:27, 24 June 2011
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Introduction
Dealing with color is fairly easy if your design is simple. You always can decide just last minute, i.e. on your embroidery machine what colors you would like to stitch with.
For more complex designs and/or designs with many colors, it's better to plan. This Stitch Era embroidery software tutorial attempts to formulate a few recommendations and tricks.
Prerequisites:
- You should have some sort of understanding of what vector objects, stitch objects (sections) and generated stitches are, e.g. have read Stitch Era - simple digitizing before.
Disclaimer: This is a first version made in a few hours and I am not sure that I didn't miss something that is important - Daniel K. Schneider 23:31, 23 June 2011 (CEST)
Colors in vector art
Color support for vector graphics is in our opinion a bit weak in Stitch Era. While there is support for color selection and basic color palette management, it is very difficult to know what color you are using in a vector object.
Knowing what color you use
Knowing the color used for an object is relatively easy, but won't help a lot.
- Select the color
Either select
- More colors in the Fill Color or Border Color pull down menu in the main menu bar on top
- or press the Fill Color or Border Color icon to the left near Images panel button (see the arrow in the picture below)
This will give you the color selection panel:
You can see we selected a kind of orange.
Stitch Era supports two color models:
- RGB, defined as amounts of 0-255 Red, 0-255 Green and 0-255 Blue
- HSL, defined as a color number in a color wheel that ranges from 0 to 360 plus saturation and luminosity.
Read the Computer colors tutorial if you need to know more about RGB and HSL colors.
Since the almost exact same color can come in dozens of different shades that your eye cannot distinguish, you must work with so-called color palettes. Else you will wind up with a stitch file that will ask you to change 10 different sorts of bright orange. Read on ...
Color palettes
Unfortunately, there are few standardized and universally used palettes:
- In embroidery world, each thread maker has its own palettes (in the plural)
- For the Internet: HTML 4 defines sixteen colors names. SVG and CSS 3 - based on X11 Color names (Wikipedia) - define a larger set of color names that you can find for example in the CSS 3 color specification. A good overview of both is available in Wikipedia's Web Colors article.
- The only somewhat popular large palette are the so-called Pantone colors, but these are not in the public domain and are difficult to get for free. In addition, some colors cannot be defined by computer colors like RGB or HSL, e.g. metallic colors. However, not certified subsets of Pantone colors can be found, e.g. at Kamgear. E.g. such a website can tell that "orange" would be Pantone 1585.
Since Pantone colors is a system that was rather made for physical colors we prefer using the "Internet" X11/CSS/SVG color set. The following table was reproduced from Wikipedia and you can only "see" it with a modern web browser.
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Using and managing Stitch Era color palettes
Stitch Era Universal, when you install it, comes with a single color palette that include too many pale colors for my taste. To see and change this palette:
- Click on the palette icon to the left near the images button.
- You then can select an item - a so-called swatch - and redefine the color.
- The replaced swatch now will show both in the pull-down menus on top and in the side bar.
I didn't yet create my own carefully planned palette, but at some point I know I should since I really suffer from dealing with too many colors in a design and the resulting messy stitch sections.
Managing palettes
Through the pull-down menu of the palette button (instead of clicking on it) you then can manage your color palettes.
Just for your information, in a vector graphics program like Illustrator, you can add a color swatch by selecting the color you have got in your workspace. This is easier.
Knowing what palette color swatch is used
There are two situations:
1) The color you use is a swatch of the palette. In this case both the color of the drop down menus on top and the swatch inside will take the aspect of your color. E.g orange for a selected orange part as you can see in the picture below.
Unfortunately, you can't see a selected color in the easier to use palette ribbon to the left (one the features that Stitch Era should improve).
2) The color you use is not part of the palette. In this case, only the color of the drop-down menu icon will change. You can see that we select a light blue shape, but in the palette we still see the prior selected orange color ...
We strongly suggest to use only colors of your palette, else it will be very difficult to make sure that colors that look the same are really the same.
The only way to insure that colors are the same is - if we understood right - to select all similar looking colors (good luck) and then to press a swatch that should represent this color, i.e. make sure that all are of the same color that matches a swatch. This is IMHO one of the major drawbacks of the vector drawing module. Btw. Stitch Era also should implement sorting of vectors by color as they do for stitch sections.
Colors in stitch sections
Colors in stitch sections are defined by needle number which in turn does have an associated color. In principle, you should associate a thread color that you have got and we shall see how to do this.
Assigning colors to needles
When you translate from vector graphics to needles, Stitch Era needs to know what needle number to assign to each color.
Assign real thread colors to needles
- Select the Needle Settings tab in the Image to Sections popup window that you should see when you use an auto-digitizing procedure.
- Tick "Assign artwork colors ...." (last item) and click on the palette item next to a needle
- Use the the Line: pull-down menu to identify your brand of threads (e.g. I use Maderia Rayon)
- Use to the pull-down menu to Associate All Colors
- You then still could fine tune, i.e. change color shades to threads you really own. To do so, use the pull down menus next to each color (see the previous screen capture).
Warning: Do not click on OK before you are done defining the other settings, i.e. leave the Image to Sections popup window open after defining the colors to needles settings and move on to defining the Stitch Settings in the third tab. Typically you might want to lower the default density.
After digitizing:
- If you glide your mouse over a needle item in the palette to the left (do not click!) you will see what Madeira thread you will be asked to use later (hopefully). As you will see the color names are Madeira's (i.e. no RGB code), but there is nothing we can do about this we believe.
- Have a look at the tips. They should be self-explaining. I.e. you now can still make changes.
Optimizing needles
Group needles together
If you did things right, you will see all the needles that you will use in on sequence. But maybe you didn't....
- Click on the Optimize needles button as shown below
As you can see, we got all colors nicely ordered, except that we have two dark greys and two dark red variants and we will deal with this without going back to vector art.
Order stitch sections by needles (optional!)
Not let us optimize needles, i.e. make sure that we don't have to change needles twice for the same color. Professionals would not do this. It can mess up carefully design stitch orders:
- Sections that should be on top of another will be stitched the other way round
- You may get inefficient jump stitches
- Pull/push effects may be worse (in case you thought about stitching carefully a bit all over the place)
But since we create non-professional embroidery, minimizing our work is more important. However, we shall have to do some manual repair later.
You may use the By Color tool in the Embroidery tab as shown below
- You could just sort by needle number (and that's what I usually do)
- Merge needles
As you can see in the following picture, we got a lonely running stitch (blame on me that uses Needle 18). It should have used needle 13 (same color as the fill). To fix that, just do the following.
- Select the section (if it is not already)
- Click on the needle in the palette, e.g. in our case 13.
Then repeat as above:
- Optimize needles
- Order sections by color if you wish
Finally, I suggest to immediately repair the vector design and make sure that all similar looking colors do have the same color, i.e. a single one for dark grey. You never know whether you will digitize the vector design (or parts of it) again.
Fixing final stitch order
Since we optimized stitch order before, we now should fix in which order sections shall be stitched. For some designs, this can be a lot of work, however, often it just means dragging items down in the object manager. Down means being stitched later.
You may consider moving around a whole set of colors first (still adopting the principle that changing threads is a pain...). In that case you can either use the object manager or the Order stitch sections by needles tool.
In the object manager:
- Use either CTRL-click to select a series of sections to move or us SHIFT-click to select a range.
- Then drag this up or down.
In order to make sure that your design is ok,
- Use at least the 3D view in Stitch Era or even play the sequence manually or automatically
- You also can use another view, e.g. I recommend My Editor as explained in Using other software to look at your design
Links
- Thread color lists
- Thread Chart information (best site I found)
- Sewing Thread Conversion Chart
- Thread chart
- Pantone and RA
- Links to Various Thread Charts for Machine Embroidery (long list)
- Conversion charts and tools
- Embroidery Thread Color Conversion Charts at RedRockThreads.com
- PANTONE Color Match (type a pantone number and get the Madeira color).
Brand-specific
- Robinson-Anton (RA)