6D

I promised to let you know about 6D compared to 5D.

Let's start with a general observation. The interface is different from the 5D version. Less jumping around from one page to another. It looks cleaner and it certainly works faster, even when you are new to it. There are more alphabets (and they have all been redigitised for better results), more fillings, more frames, minipics etc.

6DEmbroidery has two wizards, ExpressMonogram and Endless;
EmbroideryExtra has five more, not only the ExpressDesign autodigitising, but also PhotoStitch,Quiltblock, SplitProject and Background.

I never use autodigitising but played with this one for a while. I took clipart that had a bit of a mottled appearance (see picture 1) and of course the results are horrible (see picture 2). It was even worse than the one I did in 5D (picture 3).
It only works well with clean, well-defined (vector) drawings and that's what you are told.

So to be fair I tried a different picture and the result is nice for a quick gift but still has a number of flaws. picture 4. The light colour in the left foot and the tail are done in satin stitch, the rest in a fill stitch, which no variation in the stitch direction, which gives it a very flat appearance. And the whiskers don't deserve a prize either.

So that's enough said about auto-digitising.

Of course, StitchEditor let you do a number of things to change the design, but you might as well digitise from scratch.
The catch is that you can no longer get the DesignCreator module separately, ONLY as part of the complete Premium set.

The encore wizard works very well, and it is much better than the encore function in previous versions. Just doubling a design like in my picture 5 can be done by copy, paste, mirror and line-out but this is faster and flawless. Nice circles and intricate designs is a different matter, and just as fast.

The QuiltBlock wizard is a joy to work with. It could be done in 5D as I demonstrated the other day, but this is literally a one-minute job. See picture 6.

I have used DesignCreator and here too the interface has changed and makes working with it easier. More importantly the way to set your nodes has changed for the better. I have to experiment a bit more to see if I can get as fast in 6D as in Embird, which I used to show the difference between digitising manually and having your software do it for you (in other words auto-digitising). picture 7. To be honest, 6D gave the same nice filled parts but I struggled with a continuous outline.

Hope I've given you an idea of my experiences so far.