I think so! I recently did a sampler and there were sooo many changes--It had a two-color frame around it and it stitch left top corner, right bottom corner, right top corner . . . you get the picture? I thought maybe I forgot color-sort, but I loved the end result and so did my mom for mothers day. I bet a digitizer will come along with the explanation shortly, and I'm looking forward to reading their comments. Thanks for asking.

to the top...I can't begin to think of an answer for this one.....

I downloaded file called fun animals from a site,cant remember which one,have stitched out a wee mouse. There were not too many changes. Guess it depends on the design

Not necessarily ewroland it depends on the design itself, If u r painting a large picture it may have a lot of different colors n it, it's the same way with a design. Bear n mind u can always use whatever colors u want to & if u do not want to use a lot of different colors, then decide what u do want to use before u start the design. *4U

I agree with lbrow that it depends upon the design. I have done several that had many many... thread changes but the end result was well worth it.

Just read this in my 4D book--The same type of stitches stitch out first--so even if a design has only 3 colors, you will have 9 color colors if the design uses 3 kinds of stitches--like cross-stitch, half cross-stitch, and backstitch. There can be so many kinds of stitches, that 50 is probably not that uncommon.