Portrait making-PE/Palette Version 7-machine embroidery
Despite my self inflicted warning to myself that I will not purchase another upgrade to PE Design….I upgraded, LOL. What can I say, I have this terrible habit of being a software, especially embroidery software junkie.
One of the neatest features in Version 7 is the portrait maker in the Layout and Editing part. One can create so many different versions of a portrait…literally all fields from eyebrows, shape of face, etc are covered. I had to experiment and what a wonderful feature to have indeed. To create portraits, one need to select the Image menu and select the INPUT from portrait option. This lets you select from a variety of preset options of shape of face, eyes, hair, etc with a slider bar to distort and change to your liking. Using the feature I was able to create several different shapes and types of faces. What really fascinated me even more was that one can adjust the settings of each eye, ear separately if need be to give more interesting looks to the portrait. I can see a whole bunch of interesting faces created as caricatures of different people that we know. What a wonderful gift that would be!!
The Portrait is brought into the Layout and Editing window allowing you now to resize it to your requirement. It is only as a template and you can then either select the various tools to create the stitches yourself or allow the Wizard to take the image and using its various features have an autodigitized portrait.
I decided to try out one of the portraits and using the Wizard simply let the software determine the types of stitches etc. without any frills. Personally I would rather get in there and dirty my own hands so to speak, LOL…and create the stitches. But, I wanted to see what the software was capable of doing. The end result was rather interesting. Now remember that the software is not smart…well, it is smart but not so smart as to know what you want where. But, it will give you the shapes to work with and allocate different settings to each object therefore making it uniquely YOU!
Making a portrait of an Oriental with a goatee and side burns, I took the created portrait into the Wizard and let it determine the types of stitches, colors etc….in other words, left it totally upto the software to transform the image to stitches. The result…look to the right. Not bad at all! I would now take each of the objects created and give them my own attribute settings but nevertheless for someone not knowing a thing about digitizing, even the default settings would work.
Interesting concept and a wonderful way yet again for embroidery friends to create wonderful embroideries. Btw, Version 7 will save in all previous versions as well. I had no problems upgrading the software. I do understand however, that the card read/write box will also have to be upgraded and as I had the 5.4 version, there weren’t any problems. Not sure about Version 1 and 2 though.
As PE Design was my first ever software to use and to learn digitizing, it felt as if I was working with an old friend again. I am not fond of the tools though, spoiled by Embird Digitizing Studio but nevertheless, I believe the upgraded version is not bad and rather interesting. I was pleased with the Cataloger aspect of the software which allows you to open the explorer and view all your designs on a certain Disk as small thumbnail images making it easier to find the one design you are looking for. Have fun making the portraits!
Posted: December 21st, 2006 under Main, machine embroidery, PED/Palette news, Digitizing, Digitizing Softwares.
Comments: 5
Comments
Comment from Ellen
Time: December 22, 2006, 1:19 am
Can you write a step by step of how you used the wizard. I’m new at this and cannot find a way to do it. Thank you so much. Ellen
Comment from Diane
Time: January 3, 2008, 2:43 pm
I tried a number of ways to change to stitches and it always created the background and didn’t create the hair. I changed the color of the hair and upped the colors and it still left the hair out. Do you know what I could be missing?
Comment from Sadia
Time: January 4, 2008, 12:30 pm
Diane, I contacted Carol Price who is an excellent teacher of PED/Palette. She has several tutorials on the various versions of the software: http://home.att.net/~carolcp/
Her response to your query is below:
In stitch wizard you have these choices for creating your design:
Auto Punch - this option will look the most like you used the digtizing tools, even manual punch for the design
Photo Stitch 1 (color or mono) - this option will have the wandering stitching that blend into one another,
Photo Stitch 2 (color or mono) - this option will have a variety of lines that vary between running or zigzag to create the image. Mono will have one set of lines, color will have 4 (one going in each horizontal, vertical, 45 and 135 degrees)
Cross stitch - this option will create the design in cross stitch fill
Design Center - this option will take the design into Design Center
Okay, now that the lesson is done. I took the portarit into Auto Punch. I did not change any of the colors of the portrait, I just left them. When I got to the Image Anaylis dialog box where I pick and choose colors, the hair had a cross hatching over it. This means that color (or area) will not stitch. To toggle the stitching on for an area that is set to no stitching, one click on the area. Now she did not want the background to stitch. Clicking on the background did not turn it off. In the Image Anaylis dialog box, to the right side is the Omit Colors. I clicked on the background color which was white. That turned off the stitching for all the white. That also turned off the stitching for the eyes. I clicked in eyes to turn on that stitching.
A work around for the background color having the same color as something in the image. Go to Options –> design page property and chage the PAGE color to a color that won’t be in the image. I changed by Page color to purple and did not have to worry about the eyes. I still had to turn on the hair to stitch.
Carol
Thank you Carol for your help. Diane and friends, I am but a dabbler as compared to Carol in PED/Palette.
Comment from Linda
Time: April 14, 2008, 9:32 am
I was searching around on the internet for help with my problem with my Palette 6 software - well, it is not the software’s problem - it is that I don’t know how to do something with it. I can make it auto punch a picture for me, but so far, when it auto punches a line art type of picture, it doesn’t do the stitching in any good order. It does a few stitches here and then cuts thread and goes over to the other side and does a few stitches there. Then cuts again and back to the first area and stitches a bit. It drives me crazy and looks so bad on the back of the design. What am I needing to do to make the stitching be in a nice order? Help!! Thank you for your help - if you know.
Linda in Arizona
Comment from Sadia
Time: April 20, 2008, 9:38 pm
Linda, please excuse the delay in responding. Actually any auto digitizing is not perfect. You are doing what is referred to as auto digitizing, in other words, letting the software decide where to place stitches. Software generally is not a thinking machine, it cannot determine the best plot or plan. I would suggest using the tools and manually creating your outlines. One of the best teachers for PE/Palette is Carol Price. Her website is: http://home.att.net/~carolcp/
Hope this helps. Hugs, Sadia
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