Embroidery file converter and viewer
Open a .pes, .dst, .jef or .exp machine embroidery file, see every stitch in its thread colours, its size and which hoops it fits, then save it as one of the other formats. The file never leaves your device.
Open a design to see its stitches. Several files open as a list; tap one to view it.
Zoom with + or the mouse wheel; when zoomed in, drag to move and pinch to zoom on a phone. Dashed grey lines are jumps.
This design
No file open yet.
Sewing time – at
Threads, in sewing order
Hoop fit
Sewing fields as printed on machine makers’ product pages. Compare with your own hoop’s inner sewing area.
Save as
Picture and template
1× is 5 pixels per mm, 2× is 10. The PDF is an A4 placement template: the stitches at true size, the outline, a centre cross and a 10 cm check line. Print it at 100 %.
Your files stay on this device. Each file is read, drawn and converted inside this page. There is no upload and no account; once the page has loaded it works in airplane mode.
How to convert or check an embroidery file
- Open it. Drop one or more .pes, .dst, .jef or .exp files on the box, or tap it to pick them. Each one is listed with its stitch count; tap a name to show it.
- Look. Every stitch is drawn in its thread colour on the fabric colour you choose. Beside it: width and height in mm and inches, the stitch count, how many colours and colour changes, trims and jumps, the sewing time at the speed you pick, and which common sewing fields it fits.
- Save. Tap the format your machine reads. The page tells you what that format cannot hold before you take the file to the machine. Save a PNG of the preview, or print the placement template to mark the centre on your fabric.
What it cannot do
- Four formats only. It opens and writes .pes, .dst, .jef and .exp. It does not open .vp3, .xxx, .hus, .art, .emb or the editable files of digitising programs.
- No resizing, on purpose. A stitch file is needle positions, not shapes. Scaling it by more than a few percent spreads stitches into gaps or packs them until they break needles and pucker the fabric, so the page converts the stitches exactly as they are. Resizing well means re-digitising from the original design file.
- .dst and .exp carry no colours. A .dst holds no thread colours, and an .exp holds only the stops between colours. Opened here, their colour blocks are shown in a fixed default set (navy, red, green, orange, purple, black, sky blue, pink, brown, gold, then again), not the colours the design was made with.
- Colours become table numbers. A .pes or .jef stores a number from its maker’s thread table for each colour, so saving writes the nearest table colour, not your exact shade.
- Files that bend the format may misread. Files are read against the published format descriptions. A file from software that adds its own codes can open wrongly; when a file cannot be read, the page says what failed and draws nothing. Designs over 2,000,000 stitches or 300 colour blocks are refused.
- A .pes is read from its PEC block. That stitch section is in every PES version, so any .pes opens, but extras some programs keep in the newer PES part (object outlines, exact thread brands, text settings) are not read and not written. Saved .pes files are version 1.
The four formats, briefly
All four store moves in 0.1 mm steps, so a design converted between them keeps its size to the tenth of a millimetre. They differ in how far one move may go and in what they say about thread.
.dst packs each move into 3 bytes with a balanced-ternary code, so one move reaches at most 12.1 mm; longer travels are split into several jumps. It has a 512-byte text header (label, stitch count, extents) and no colours at all. .exp is the plainest: 2 bytes per stitch (x then y, each −12.7 to +12.7 mm), with an escape byte for jumps, trims and colour stops. .jef adds a header with a hoop code and one thread-table number per colour, then 2-byte stitches. .pes wraps a PEC block: a thread-table list, stitches in 1 or 2 bytes (a move up to 204.7 mm) and small preview pictures.
Worked example: a two-colour badge of 615 stitches, 40 × 40 mm, with six jumps and one colour change. As .dst it is 2,381 bytes (the 512-byte header plus 3 bytes for each of its 623 records); as .exp 1,262 bytes (2 bytes a stitch, 4 for a jump or a stop); as .jef 1,404 bytes; as .pes 5,096 bytes, the extra being the PES section and the 48 × 38 preview pictures, one for the whole design and one per colour. Saving a .pes as .dst splits any move longer than 12.1 mm into equal shorter jumps that land on the same needle points, and the page says how many it split.
Sewing time is the stitch count divided by the speed you choose (most home machines sew embroidery at 400 to 850 stitches a minute). It leaves out colour changes and trims, so allow a few minutes more per thread.
Questions
How do I convert a PES file to DST?
Open the .pes, check the preview, then tap Save as .dst. The stitches are kept move for move. The .dst stores no colours, so the machine stops at each colour change and you thread the next colour yourself, following the thread list on this page.
Can I view a DST file without installing software?
Yes. Open it here on a phone or computer: it is drawn stitch by stitch, with its size, stitch count, colour changes, trims, jumps and hoop fit. The colours you see are a stated default set, because a .dst has none.
Why does my design look different on my machine’s screen?
Colours: the machine shows its own table colours, and for .dst or .exp it guesses. Position: some machines centre a design in the hoop, others start from where the file starts. The stitches themselves are the same.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Everything happens in this page. The only requests are for the page’s own code and an anonymous count with a fixed event name (a file was opened, a file was converted); none contains the file, its name or any stitch.