Photoembroidery.com is an online digitizing tool that creates photo stitch embroidery sew files for your embroidery machine.

Upload photos of people, pets, or landscapes and not logos. 

For examples of designs produced by the system, please see the Gallery.

To create an account, simply follow these steps:

1. Go to the Create an account page.
2. Provide a valid email address and select a username.
3. Agree to the Terms of Service of the site.
4. Fill in the CAPTCHA.
5. Select "Create new account."
6. Check your email for a confirmation message that contains a one-time link to log in and set your password.
7. Click the link and set your password.
8. In the future, you can easily log in at https://photoembroidery.com/user using your username and password.

Congratulations! You can now start using your new account.

After you create an account and log in.

1. Select the Add Photo button in Photos
2. Give your photo a name
3. Select the Choose File and select your photo with the systems file browser.
4. Press Save

Allowed types: png jpeg jpg jpe gif. 20 MB limit.

Check that the photo is what you want the design to look like.

The recommendation is you digitize a photo multiple times to give you a selection. Every design produced is different, even with the same settings.

1. Press the Digitize Photo button on the photo you want digitized  

2. Set the digitizing settings

• The Hoop is the maximum design size.
• Size of design height and width have locked proportions and set the design’s size, including any transparent pixels.
• Thread Palettes ​​​​​​are the colors the system can pick.
• Maximum colors are the number of colors the system can select from the thread palette.
• Maximum cuts per color: The number of times a thread color can be cut.

3.  Press "Start Digitizing."

Currently available system thread palettes.

• Isacord Poly
• Madeira Poly
• Madeira Frosted Matt
• Gunold Poly
• Gunold Sulky
• ThreadArt
• Simthread

You can make new thread palettes from a mix and match of any system threads. 
Use can use just your current thread inventory. The system can only pick from the threads you give it to creates a design.

Use the thread colors the system selects. Please think of the system like it's a painter, and the thread palette is the paint the system can use when digitizing (painting) a project, but using tricks of the eye to mix thread colors (paint) in your brain.  Changing thread color changes the other colors perceived colors.

To make the system use your thread inventory, create a Thread palette with just the colors from your inventory. Give the painter your paints (thread set) and ask it to paint (digitize) you a picture.

Fully transparent pixels do not get filled. Semi-transparent pixels get filled at a lower density.

Remove the photo parts you don't want to be in your design by making them transparent in your photo.

How do I make parts of the photo I don't want transparent?

This site has simple editing tools, and If the parts of your photo you want to remove are a solid color, you can use a flood eraser or color eraser tools to remove areas. If the area is more complex, you would need to use a photo editor like GIMP(free), Photoshop(subscription), or Pixlr(free) to remove the parts you don’t want 

A web search will provide more programs and instructions on removing backgrounds from images and saving them as transparent png files.

Resources:

removebg - Remove Image Backgrounds automatically

GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program

Pixlr - Online Photo Editor