ImagesMagUK_July_2021

Tools of the trade In the second of his two-part series delving into the art of digitising, Erich Campbell discusses the tools available to digitisers Credit: All images are courtesy of the author with setting stitch angles, both with an understanding that the column ends with a single, flat stitch requiring no defined ‘ends’. For single-thickness satin strokes there’s a satin line drawing tool that keeps stitch angles perpendicular to edges and maintains a uniform width. Fill stitches used to cover larger areas are set with a tool that draws an edge around an entire space, however, many I n last month’s issue of Images , I discussed the pros and cons of importing vectors versus redrawing. This month, I’m taking a look at the tools digitisers use. There is a range of different tools for shape creation in every digitising platform, and the number of tools available has expanded over time. The first tools that were developed to create shapes for embroidery were inherently stitch-type specific. The modern versions, however, allow any reasonable stitch type to be applied to shapes made with any tool, with the current crop of tools and drawing methods taking their cues from vector drawing software – either in creation or editing – to emulate the experience a traditional print designer might expect. Old-school tools Traditional tools create shapes by assuming a particular stitch type will be used. Satin stitches are used largely for narrow, column-style elements, with a series of stitch angles set along the length of the column. Therefore, satin- specific tools will create columns with either alternating side point entry and stitch angles set at every point pair, or with each side of the column defined entirely, one at a time, and followed Inputting a curve with spline tools [above, bottom] is extremely simple, but it can take a great deal of points to arrive at a shape. The shapes can be somewhat inefficient, but for novice digitisers or non-designers, it can make the process less difficult than learning to use Bezier curves. That said, looking at the fewer nodes of a Bezier version of the shape [above, top] makes it clear why designers and purists favour the classic curve In modern digitising software, you may find it set up to edit shapes with standard Bezier curves. Vector artists making the shift to digitising are likely to want to switch on these handles as they will find this method of editing and shaping easier than using the splines common to some software packages; however, this similarity to vector tools shouldn’t be thought of as an endorsement of the idea that embroidery digitising is simply ‘vector plus stitch types’ KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 62 images JULY 2021