Converting a photo to cross stitch using Easy Cross

Sometimes converting a photo to cross stitch is the best way to get exactly the design you want. Maybe it is a personal photograph of a pet or loved one, or perhaps a picture of a house you loved living in or just a favourite photo. So how difficult is it to make your own photo patterns? Cross stitch is the ideal way of stitching a lasting reminder whether to keep for yourself or to give as a gift, and the personal nature makes it extra special.

If you have a computer and a copy of Easy Cross it is easy to convert your favourite photos, read on to find out how.

Firstly you need to get your photograph onto the computer. You can do this by downloading it from your digital camera or by scanning it.

Take note that today's digital cameras have so many pixels that the photos can end up huge! Before you do anything else you will need to reduce the size (in pixels) of your picture in photo editing software. This is also an ideal time to crop off anything that you do not want in the cross stitch design. We can find tune this later in Easy Cross so don't panic if you don't get it quite as you want it at this stage.

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Photo to cross stitch conversion

So now you have resized your photo let's open Easy Cross and get started converting our photo to cross stitch.

On the menu bar you will see "Convert" next to File. Click on this and then click on Convert Image as shown in the screen shot, left. Although it says you can acquire an image from a scanner straight into Easy Cross I would advise against this as you won't be able to resize before the photo to cross stitch conversion.

The program will bring up a dialogue box where you can find your file and then click on Open.

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Adjust your image

The next dialogue box will give you the opportunity to edit your photo. For example you can increase the saturation or alter the brightness of the picture. One option I use quite a bit here, is the second one down "despeckle".

The program will look at every pixel in the photograph and turn it into a square on the cross stitch chart, deciding on the colour for each square. If you take the time to despeckle first it will help Easy Cross make a better guess as to the colour to use for each stitch.

Once you have made your selections, click the Apply button and then OK. The program will go away and do its stuff for a moment and then present you with the Convert Area dialogue box.

convert-photo-area-to-cross-stitch (25K) Here you can choose to only convert part of the image, for example just the subject and a circle of background around it as I have started doing here with my butterfly photo.

I picked a size 30 brush and then started drawing over the section I want to keep. The selected area will show up lighter than the rest of the picture.

You can also tell the computer whether the darker or lighter colours are less important. This is useful if your light coloured subject is positioned against a dark background. You may not want as much detail in the background as you do in the subject.

When you are satisfied with your selection click close to move on.

photo-to-cross-stitch-pattern (30K) The Convert Image dialogue box will allow you to choose how you want your finished pattern. By clicking the drop down arrow next to "convert to" you can pick from the various options. Backdrop is a more manual option and I will cover that later. For this butterfly picture I choose Full Stitch.

The next box down allows you to use colours from various manufacturers colour charts or from the palette of an existing design in Easy Cross.

If you choose Chart the next box will let you pick the manufacturer. If you pick Palette then it gives the chance to pick the other design.

Then you have to decide how big you want your finished design.

The larger you make it, the more lifelike the resulting photo to cross stitch conversion will be. But, of course, it could take ages to stitch! You have to weigh one choice up against the other here and pop either the width (first box) or height into the program. The second number will be calculated automatically for you.

I tend to leave the next box at Take Average and then think about the number of colours I want Easy Cross to use in the design. Again the more you use the better the finished pattern will look, but it will also be more difficult to stitch. Or you can let the program use a Sensible Number.

When you have made your choices you may want to click the Refresh Preview button to get an idea of what the finished cross stitch will look like.

If you are happy click OK.

photo-to-cross-stitch (68K) Easy Cross will do its work and create the photo to cross stitch conversion for you.

Then it will show you the whole design in cross stitch view. You can change the view to colour blocks or black and white symbols are shown left. It does a pretty good job of picking dark symbols for dark colours and vice versa, but you can easily change any symbol you want to make sure they are easy to tell apart.

All you have left to do is save and print out your photo to cross stitch pattern, collect your threads, and start stitching. Have fun and I'd love to see your results.