PES vs DST vs JEF vs EXP: What's the Difference?
Embroidery machines don’t share a file format. Each brand settled on its own, so the same design is usually sold as a bundle of five or six files, and you’re left to work out which one your machine wants. Here’s what the four most common formats are, and how they differ.
At a glance
| Format | Made by | Machines | Thread colors | Longest single stitch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PES | Brother | Brother, Baby Lock | Yes | No practical limit |
| DST | Tajima | Most commercial and multi-needle machines | No | 12.1 mm |
| JEF | Janome | Janome, many Elna | Yes, from Janome’s thread chart | 12.7 mm |
| EXP | Melco | Melco, Bernina | No | 12.7 mm |
All four record positions in tenths of a millimeter, so none of them is more precise than the others. They differ in what they store alongside the stitches.
PES
PES is Brother’s home-machine format, and Baby Lock machines read it too. It stores the thread colors, matched to Brother’s thread chart, along with a small preview picture the machine shows on its screen. If you have a Brother, this is the file to use.
DST
DST, from Tajima, is the closest thing embroidery has to a common language. Nearly every commercial and multi-needle machine reads it, so digitizers and design shops deliver it by default. It stores the stitches and where each color change falls, but not the colors themselves. You assign threads at the machine.
DST stitches can be at most 12.1 mm long. A longer move gets split into several, which you won’t notice on the finished piece. DST also has no trim command of its own: a trim is written as a few jumps in a row, which most machines can be set to treat as a cut.
JEF
JEF is Janome’s format, and many Elna machines read it too. It stores colors as entries in Janome’s thread chart rather than as exact colors, so a color can shift slightly when a design is converted to JEF from another format.
EXP
EXP is Melco’s format, which Bernina machines also read. Like DST, it has no thread colors, only the color changes.
Which one should I use?
Use the format your machine’s manual names. Your machine’s own format usually beats a “universal” one, because it brings the thread colors along. If the design you want only comes in a different format, convert it: the stitches carry over unchanged, and only the colors depend on the formats involved.
- To see what’s in a file before you stitch it, open it in the embroidery file viewer. See also how to open a PES file and how to view DST files online.
- To change formats, use the embroidery file converter, or read how to convert PES to DST (and back).