Why does digitizing cost as much as it does?
Many people out there think that digitizing for commercial embroidery is a scanned process where art is loaded, a few buttons are pushed and out pops (magically) a fully usable and perfectly running design.
The honest truth is, the process is far more complicated than that. This is the reason that any commercial digitizer worth their weight in gold, charges more than the advertisements you see all the time for designs for $15. Yes, the industry is closing in on some auto-digitizing software options but they don't work for designs more complicated than very basic line art and not at all for text; and let's face it, how many custom company logos do you see that fit that mold.
In the embroidery market as a whole today, you can buy "digitizing" software for anything from $500 to $10,000. Quite a few home embroidery softwares call themselves digitizing software because the waters have gotten muddy and the term "digitizing" has become a broad term, meaning that they are able to upload a picture and punch some stitches over it. The differences between the $500 stuff and the commercial top of the line softwares costing $8,000 - $10,000 is definitely night and day! You're not just paying for more option or buttons with the high end; you're paying for the programming and stitch processing capabilities of the software....and you're paying for the ability to alter and/or edit every possible aspect of the stitches, in any manner, to create a stitch file that is controllable in every way and capable of sewing commercially, professional quality. Therefore, someone with $1,000 software isn't capable of turning out stitch files with commercial results.
Now that's just the technical side of embroidery digitizing; let's talk about the digitizer themselves. You should be concerned with experience above all because if you want your designs to reflect "professional" to your customers, your going to need someone who knows what they're doing, has been doing it for quite awhile and understands not only production of embroidery but the very technical side of the art of digitizing. ...And make no mistake, it IS an ART. Those that digitize professionally and are very successful, have years upon years of experience and have an inherent creativity that brings something special to their work. These people charge more for their expertise, NeedleUp is included in this group. Now, you've heard me say this before but it bears repeating. When purchasing software or just the service of digitizing; YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! If you still don't get this, you've either been miss-informed or are very lucky. (And don't even start me on the topic of over-seas digitizing companies...another time perhaps)
Anyone with money can buy expensive digitizing software....in the same way that anyone can buy scissors; That doesn't necessarily make them a hairdresser now does it?
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