Short answer: your machine reads one or two specific formats, and the rest of the files in a design pack are for other people’s machines. PES is Brother and Babylock, JEF is Janome, VP3 and HUS are Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff, EXP is Bernina and Melco, XXX is Singer, DST is the commercial standard that almost everything reads. Find yours below, use that file, and ignore the others.
Which format does my machine read?
| Format | Machines that read it | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PES | Brother, Babylock | The most widely sold home format. PEC and PEN are relatives of it. |
| JEF | Janome, Elna | JEF+ is a newer variant for some models. |
| VP3 / VIP / HUS | Husqvarna Viking, Pfaff | VP3 is current. VIP and HUS are older and still common in design packs. |
| EXP | Bernina, Melco | Often paired with a separate color file. |
| XXX | Singer | Also appears on some Compucon machines. |
| DST | Tajima, Barudan, most commercial machines — and many home ones | The closest thing to a universal format. Carries no color information. |
| U01 / U?? | Barudan | Commercial. |
| SEW | Older Janome | Largely replaced by JEF. |
| ART | Bernina software | A working file, not a stitch file. See below. |
If your machine is not listed, check the manual for “file format” or “design format.” It is usually in the first few pages.
The distinction that matters: stitch files and working files
This is the piece nobody explains, and it causes more confusion than everything else combined.
Stitch files — PES, JEF, DST and the rest — are finished instructions. Needle down here, stitch this many, change color, move there. They are what your machine reads, and they are what you buy.
Working files — formats belonging to a particular software — hold the design as shapes and settings rather than finished stitches. The software can regenerate the stitches from scratch at any size, because it still knows what the design means.
Why you care: a stitch file is baked. You can resize it a little, but every stitch is already placed, so stretching it far apart makes gaps and squashing it makes a solid mass. A working file can be rebuilt properly at the new size — but only in the software that created it.
When a design pack includes a working file you cannot open, that is what it is, and it is not a fault.
Why one design comes with a dozen files
Shops sell to everyone, so they include every common format. One purchase might hold eight or ten, plus two or three sizes of each, plus a preview picture and a color chart.
You need one of them. The rest are not clutter exactly — they are insurance for the day you change machines — but you can safely ignore them.
Keeping them costs nothing. Here is what everything in a design pack is for.
Sizes are not the same thing as resizing
When a pack has the same design at 4×4, 5×7 and 6×10, those are not one design scaled. Each one has been digitized separately, with its own underlay and its own stitch density, because a small design needs different treatment from a large one.
So take the size closest to what you need rather than resizing a different one. Scaling a stitch file by more than about twenty percent is where puckering, gaps and thread breaks begin.
Converting between formats
You can convert a stitch file from one format to another, and plenty of software does it. It generally works, with two caveats worth knowing.
You can lose color information. DST in particular carries no thread colors at all, so converting to DST and back leaves the design needing its colors set again.
You cannot convert your way to a better design. Conversion rewrites the same stitches into a different container. If the original is too dense for your fabric, the converted one is too.
If your format is missing from a pack you bought, ask the shop before converting. Most will send it.
A quick way to identify a mystery file
If you have a file and no idea what it is, the extension — the letters after the dot — is the answer. Check it against the table above.
If Windows is hiding extensions, open File Explorer, go to View, and tick File name extensions. On a Mac, Finder settings has Show all filename extensions. Turning this on makes embroidery files far easier to live with.
Questions people ask
Which format is best?
The one your machine reads. There is no better or worse — they are different containers for the same thing.
My machine takes DST and PES. Which should I use?
PES, if the design comes with it, because it carries thread colors. DST does not, so you would be setting colors by hand.
Can I open a PES file on my computer to look at it?
Not without software that renders it — there is no picture inside the file. Here is why, and the free ways round it.
Someone sent me a format my machine cannot read.
Ask them for it in yours — it takes them seconds if they have the original. Failing that, conversion is the fallback.
What about SVG and PNG files in the folder?
Not embroidery files. An SVG is usually a cutting file for appliqué, for a Cricut or similar. A PNG or JPG is the preview picture.
Keep reading
Why your embroidery files show as blank icons · How to open a zipped embroidery file · How to find a design you already bought · The five kinds of embroidery software