Just another suggestion...........purchase an external hard drive for your designs............I crashed and luckly I was able to retreve most of mine. I now put them on the external just for safe keeping. And with my first emb. machine I had the basic software...........one additional program I purchased that was Buzz Tools. I like that program so much. And as for colors I just looked at the design and did values like is the green light-medium-or dark needed...............have fun........I too am still learning from my software.............calla