For those of you experienced at downloading embroidery designs from the web.

I downloaded a design. The design is a dog - realistic dog not a cartoon dog. It is a Kuvasz (large white long haired dog).

When I uploaded it to my machine (Brother), it converted the colors to weird colors. The shadow under the dog was supposed to be grey and it called for black. The dog itself is supposed to be white and it called for blue. The tongue was OK. The eyes, nose and lip line should have been black and it called for lime green! The shadows on the dog should have been either beige or grey and it called for Vermillion.

Why? How? Did the colors get converted? Was the design at fault or my machine? Was there anything I could have done to avoid the problem?

Fortunately I ran a test of the design first because some of the smaller areas (tongue, nose, eyes, lip line) were difficult to determine what they were. On other designs it might be impossible.

Do those of you who download designs regularly ALWAYS run a test first or do you jump right in and embroider the item you want?

Oh ... I downloaded from http://www.embroiderydesigns.com


Thanks

I looked at the website and it appears that they have a color sheet for each design that tells the Maderia colors they use. It depends on how the design was digitized as to how the design colors come up in your machine. Designs that were originally .dst but coverted to .pes will change colors.

mltquilt

When you download a design if it was not created on the machine type your using the colors will not convert from the machine they used to your machine. On the better websites they will give you a color sheet to tell you what color to be used where.

Some sites like Embrolibrary let you put in your machine's color catagory...So you have to know what it is...Like I have a Husqvarna SE so I can us format HUS or PES...anything else colors come out like yours did...So just be aware if you have a choice.

In addition to the dst not converting well to pes, is it possible that the Madeira colors were converted to Brother colors? I don't know - just guessing.

And does the color chart actually call for a blue thread where a white thread would be more appropriate, or does it just look blue on your monitor? All the dst files look weird on my computer - I'm using the thumbnail viewer from S and S Computer - it's called SewIconz. But on the chart, I think the color number is the appropriate one for the design, not the weird color shown on the screen.

Most files show up looking pretty close to what you want, but the dst's are really crazy aren't they? :)

Unfortunately, I was advised to download dst's wherever possible because of some advantage they had over the proprietary formats - can't remember what the advantage was, but I followed the advice and now my embroidery files are a real mish-mash of formats and some reallllly strange looking icons. :D

I've experienced this too. I couldn't figure it out but since I usually pick my own colors to stitch out designs it didn't bother me too much.
Someone mentioned Sew Iconz. I am using the trial version of it this week and, although I love it, it changed the colors on several of my saved designs. I thought that was odd too. I have a design of a pure white dog (alaskan eskie) and Sew Iconz changed it to a blue dog in the thumbnail view...lol

The color "chart" on the website showed the colors as black, white, grey, red - which is all correct. It even gave the Maderia numbers. I *think* my machine is also geared to Maderia color numbers. I'll check that as well.

My machine was showing the wrong colors - not the color (monotone LCD) but the word "blue" where it should have said "white".

Can I use DST files on a brother? I thought I could only use PES. I'll see if I can find anything in the manual.

Often times your software will change white to another color so you can see the design when you print out a worksheet. If you have white that isn't outlined in a different color your worksheet will be blank.

Oh, I didn't know SewIconz could do that.

I think pes is the only format you can use for Brother. You have to convert dst to pes. The software that comes with Futura can read dst, but I think it converts it to xxx to send it to the machine. It's been so long since I messed with I don't even remember for sure.

I think the advantage of the dst is that it converts more accurately to other formats (except for color display :D ) than any other format. It's for commercial embroidery situations, where a variety of machines might be in use.

I have a Brother machine, I've never had this issue. But I tend to only download .PES format since that is what my machine uses.. rarely have I converted it.

I ALWAYS test designs.....