Photo2PatternFree DST file viewer
DST file viewer that counts the records itself
Drop a Tajima .dst here and every three-byte record in it is decoded: needle penetrations, jump records, color stops, the needle path in meters, the shortest and longest stitch, and the design box to a tenth of a millimeter. Those figures are counted from the records rather than lifted out of the 512-byte header, so when the two disagree — which is how a file edited by something careless gives itself away — you are shown both instead of one. It is free, there is nothing to sign up to, and the page writes nothing: the file leaves byte for byte as it arrived.
- 100% free
- No signup
- Reads .dst up to 2 MB
- Counted, not read off the header
- Nothing written back
How to read a stitch file you were sent
Three checks, in the order that decides whether the file is worth hooping fabric for.
Open the file rather than trusting what it is called
An extension is a claim, not a format. Drop the .dst in and the page reads the first 512 bytes as the Tajima header, then walks the rest three bytes at a time; if what follows the header is not a run of stitch records the page says so and stops rather than drawing something. Two checks run automatically while it reads: every valid record sets the two lowest bits of its third byte, and a proper file ends with 0x00 0x00 0xF3. A file that fails the first has been truncated or shifted by a byte somewhere in transfer, and a file missing the second was cut short — some machines tolerate that and some refuse the design at the panel.
Read the count you are actually being charged for
Embroidery is priced by the thousand stitches, so the number matters commercially and there are two of them. Needle penetrations are the stitches that put thread in the fabric; jump records move the head with the needle up and cost time but no thread. Digitizing software disagrees about whether jumps belong in the total, which is why both are shown separately here and why the header's own ST field is quoted beside them rather than instead of them. The trim count underneath is a reading rather than a fact — this format has no trim command, so a trim is inferred from consecutive jumps, and the threshold is an editable field so you can see how much the answer moves.
Check the extents against the hoop before anything else
The design box is reported in both millimeters and inches, and the table under it compares that box against seven sewing fields from 100 by 100 mm up to 360 by 500 mm, marking each as fitting, fitting only turned a quarter, or too small. Read the spare-width column rather than the verdict: anything under about 5 mm of clearance is a fail in practice, because the fabric has to be gripped by the ring somewhere and a design that touches the edge of the field will be pressed against the plastic. Machines badged with the same inch pair differ from one another by a few millimeters, so treat the row as a shortlist and measure your own frame.
Technical specifications
| What it opens | Tajima .dst — a 512-byte ASCII header followed by three-byte stitch records. Up to 2 MB, which is exactly 698,880 records |
|---|---|
| Coordinate resolution | 0.1 mm per step. One record moves an axis by at most ±121 steps, so 12.1 mm is the longest single stitch along an axis and 17.1 mm on the 45° diagonal |
| Header fields decoded | LA, ST, CO, +X, -X, +Y, -Y, AX, AY, MX, MY and PD are shown raw, and ST is checked against the records. CO counts color changes, so the thread count is one higher |
| Measured from the records | needle penetrations, jump records, stops, needle path, travel with the needle up, shortest and longest stitch, stitches under 1 mm, records sitting on the axis ceiling |
| Thread colors reported | None, because the format stores none. The twelve hues in the preview are assigned by this page and a block-at-a-time view is provided so nothing depends on them |
| Hoop fields compared | seven sewing fields, 100 × 100 mm to 360 × 500 mm, each tested straight and turned a quarter |
| What leaves the page | a PNG of the stitch path and a CSV of the block list. No stitch file is written and the .dst you opened is not modified |
| Where the bytes are decoded | in this tab. The file is read with the browser's own file reader and never posted anywhere |
Frequently asked questions
What is actually stored inside a .dst file?
Movements, and almost nothing else. After a fixed 512-byte header of plain ASCII, the entire rest of the file is three-byte records, one per machine command, each carrying how far to move in x and y plus a flag saying whether the needle goes down, the head jumps with the needle up, the machine stops for a thread change, or the design ends. The distances are in tenths of a millimeter and are written in balanced ternary: each axis is the sum of five signed places worth 1, 3, 9, 27 and 81, so one record can move an axis by at most 121 of those units. There is no thread color, no stitch type, no shape, no layer, no fabric and no name for anything. A .dst is a control tape, and everything a person thinks of as the design has been thrown away by the time it becomes one.
Why does this viewer show no thread colors?
Because the file has none to show. Tajima records a color change as a stop command and never says what to stop for, so the block that sews your logo in gold is byte for byte identical to the block that sews it in navy. Programs that appear to know the colors are reading a separate file that shipped alongside — a .col, an .inf, or the palette embedded in the .pes the .dst was exported from — or they are guessing from a house default list and not telling you. The hues in the preview here are this page's own, drawn from a fixed set of twelve so that consecutive blocks can be told apart, and the block-at-a-time selector exists so nothing on the screen depends on being able to distinguish them.
My software reports a different stitch count. Which one is right?
Probably both, because you are looking at two different quantities. This page counts needle penetrations and jump records separately and never adds them together on your behalf; most commercial software quotes one combined figure, and which convention it uses is a setting rather than a standard. Add the two numbers here and you will usually land on what your software says. If neither reading matches, look at the header panel: the ST field is a number the punching software wrote once and nothing updates afterwards, so any tool that has edited the design without rewriting the first 512 bytes leaves a header that disagrees with the records — which is exactly the fault this page is built to surface.
What are the straight lines running across my design?
Those are the jumps, drawn dashed, and they are the head traveling with the needle raised between one area and the next. On the fabric they either become a loose thread stretched across the design that gets trimmed by hand afterwards, or they trigger an automatic trim if the machine has one and the run is long enough. A design with a great many of them will be slow and messy to finish, and the count is worth reading before a production run: a hundred jumps is a hundred loose ends. Turn the dashes off with the checkbox if they are burying the stitching, but do not take them out of the count.
Can I edit or resize the design here?
No, deliberately — this page opens the file and closes it, and nothing you do on it changes a byte. Resizing a stitch file is not a matter of scaling coordinates: the density is fixed at the moment it was digitized, so enlarging a design by a fifth spreads the same stitches over more fabric and leaves gaps, while shrinking it packs them until the needle punches the same hole repeatedly and the thread shreds. Ten percent either way is what most operators will risk without recalculating the density. If what you need is the same stitches in a format your machine will read, that is the embroidery file converter; if you need stitches made from artwork, that is the digitizer.
How do I tell whether a file is corrupt before I run it?
Look at three things this page reports and one it cannot. Every record must set the two low bits of its third byte, so a file that stops being read partway through has been damaged in transfer — the commonest cause is a copy interrupted on a USB stick. The terminator record should be present and the padding after it should be small. The header's stitch count and extents should agree with what the records add up to. What no viewer can tell you is whether the design was digitized competently, because a badly punched design is a perfectly valid file; for that, read the stitches-under-1 mm figure and the density it implies.
Why does it matter how many stitches are under a millimeter?
Because those are the ones that break thread and needles. A stitch shorter than about a millimeter puts the needle back into a hole it has just made, which cuts the thread already lying there and eventually the fabric with it; enough of them in one place and the machine will stop repeatedly on a run that looked fine on screen. They arrive from auto-digitizing a shape with fine detail, from scaling a design down, and from converters that split a long stitch without checking the remainder. A handful in a large design is normal. Several hundred is a design to send back.
About the Tajima format, and what it deliberately forgets
DST is a punched-tape format that never stopped being one. Tajima’s machines were fed paper tape before they were fed floppies, and the file that replaced the tape kept its shape: a fixed 512-byte header of printable ASCII, then nothing but three-byte movement records until the design ends. The encoding of those three bytes is the elegant part. Each axis is written in balanced ternary — five signed places worth 1, 3, 9, 27 and 81 — which packs a range of ±121 tenths of a millimeter per axis into ten bit-pairs and leaves the remaining bits of the third byte free for the flags that mark a jump, a color change and the end of the file. That ±121 is a hard wall rather than a convention: 12.1 mm is the longest move the format can express along an axis, 17.1 mm on the diagonal, and anything further has to be broken into several records. When this page reports records sitting on that ceiling, it is telling you the design contains movements the format had to cut up to describe.
The header is a set of claims, and it is the part most likely to be wrong. ST is a stitch count somebody’s software wrote once; nothing in the format keeps it honest, so any program that trims, merges or re-sequences a design without rewriting those first 512 bytes leaves a file that lies about itself. CO is the field that catches people out — it counts color changes, so a design with three threads carries CO:002, and a careless read of it under-orders thread by exactly one cone every time. The four extent fields describe a bounding box measured from the start point rather than from a corner, which is why a design can report a positive and a negative X of very different sizes and still be centered on the hoop. Everything on this page that could be either measured or read has been measured, and the header is shown beside it so the two can be compared.
What the format forgets is the whole reason this cluster of pages exists. There is no thread color in a .dst, no stitch type, no shape or outline, no underlay flag, no fabric and no record of how any of it was decided — those all lived in the digitizing software’s own project file and did not survive the export. That is why converting a .pes to a .dst quietly discards a palette, which is the subject of the embroidery file converter, and why a stitch file can never be turned back into artwork. If you are matching thread to a physical shade rather than reading a file, the DMC color chart is the right page for that, and if you are starting from a picture rather than a file you want the digitizer, which is candid about how little of a photograph survives the trip.
Product and company names shown here are the trademarks of their respective owners. Photo2Pattern is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them.
Where the bytes are read
Your file is opened by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading this in. It is never uploaded, never sent to a server and never stored anywhere — there is no upload step to undo, because there is no upload. Close the tab and nothing of it remains.
This page is also the one tool in the set that produces no stitch file at all. Your .dst is opened for reading, decoded into numbers, and closed; the PNG and the CSV are built from those numbers, and the original is never rewritten, renamed or copied anywhere.