Jay Fishman, veteran digitizer and owner of Ohio-based Wicked Stitch of the East,

talks about common digitizing mistakes, the real value of automated punching tools

and dealing with overseas competition.

True digitizing is manual, not soft-

ware-based. Learn to digitize; don't

just rely on automated tools in digitizing

software. Everyone uses software now. It

used to cost $15,000 to buy a digitizing

software package, and now it's down to

$1,500, so the barrier to entry has been

significantly lowered. True digitizers

think in terms of manual digitizing. Too

many punchers today rely on auto-

digitizing with presets. While software

has become super automatic, it's not

foolproof -- you need to understand how

it auto-operates so that you can correct

designs when needed.

Software has a lot of answers, but it's

not always correct. In the time it takes

to edit what was automaticaly digitized,

you could have digitized it yourself twice.

Automation has come a long way, but

you're either going to spend your time

digitizing or editing. Great digitizers

turn the auto-functions off and don't

let software make decisions for them. If

you're classically trained, you know what

you have to do and you do it. In my shop,

we do a lot of work for dog agility events

and horse shows. If the animals' faces

aren't digitized just right, the customer

sees it immediately. Software can do a

lot of things, but it'll never replace the

human eye.

Digitizers should provide post-sale

support. People think good digitizers

are a dime a dozen. They're not. Right

now, there are growth opportunities

in supporting our decorator customers

"At the end of the day, cutomers will

figure out the difference between good

and bad digitizing, so wherever it comes

from, if the quality is poor, they'll go

somewhere else."