Does Chroma work with my embroidery machine?

The Ricoma myth, cleared up

It's a reasonable assumption that software made by an embroidery-machine manufacturer would be locked to that manufacturer's machines. With Chroma, that assumption is wrong.

Ricoma is explicit that Chroma has universal compatibility — it works with every embroidery machine, regardless of brand. So whether you own a Brother, Janome, Bernina, Baby Lock, Tajima or a Ricoma, Chroma can produce files your machine reads.

30+ formats for any machine

The reason it's so widely compatible is its format support. Chroma exports over 30 embroidery formats, covering the common ones and many specialist ones. The list includes DST, PES, JEF, EXP, HUS, VIP, VP3, VP4 and XXX among others, plus non-stitch outputs like PDF, PNG and JPG for sharing or printing.

Whatever format your machine expects, Chroma can almost certainly write it — and the batch tools in the Plus and Luxe tiers let you export several designs into different formats at once.

Which format does your machine use?

The practical question is which format to export. As a guide: Brother and Baby Lock use PES; Ricoma, Tajima and most commercial machines use DST; Janome and Elna use JEF; Melco uses EXP; and Husqvarna Viking uses HUS or VP3.

For most commercial jobs, DST is the safest, most universal choice, though you set thread colours manually with it. For colour-critical or home projects, formats like PES and JEF retain thread colours and stitch settings. Our format comparison guide explains the differences.

Ricoma-machine extras

If you do own a Ricoma machine, there are some bonuses. Chroma Inspire is included with Ricoma machines, and for certain models with touch screens, Chroma offers Wi-Fi export — sending designs straight from your computer to the machine without a USB drive.

These are conveniences for Ricoma owners rather than restrictions on everyone else. The core software works universally either way.

StitchFast is machine-agnostic too

StitchFast takes the same universal approach. It exports the common machine formats — DST, PES, JEF, EXP, VP3 and HUS — which between them read on virtually every home and commercial machine, and you choose the format you need at download.

The difference is how you get there: with StitchFast you upload an image and the AI digitizes it in the browser, with no software to install and no tier to buy. See the Chroma alternative page.

Compatibility isn't the same as digitizing

One thing worth separating: a tool being compatible with your machine tells you it can export the right file, but not how easily you can create that file. Chroma's compatibility is excellent; the effort is in the digitizing itself, which is where the learning curve lives.

If you want the compatibility without the learning curve, an automatic tool does the digitizing for you and still exports a file your machine reads. That's the gap StitchFast fills — universal format support plus AI that does the work.