Dance Under The Rain - Possible New Project?

[kezibell]

After searching hundreds of pictures, I have found this colourful romantic one - if I was to buy a painting, it would be this style!

I have emailed the artist and have his permission to chart and stitch it.

Do you think it would work as a cross stitch and what type of size would suit? I won't get a chance to sit and chart it until the weekend, I will make it my mothers day treat!

[Brekkana]

Oh I love the colors!! It depends on how big you want it, I would play around and see how it looks, are you planning to stitch big or small ct? Aida or linen? It looks like it will be fun!!

[richardandtracy]

Looks pretty impressive.
I don't really go for anything bigger than 450 stitches in any direction as it takes just too long. I've never taken longer than a year on any project, but having said that, 335 x 450 looks good to me. Straight colour conversion, no dithering on this one as it muddies the colours, and keeping the colour count to below 100 makes for a nice picture. It may need a little pixel editing to get rid of the remains of the artist's signature.

Did a conversion using my program with a black fabric, 22ct, 4 colour space divisions, with no dithering , gives 76 colours, and a stitch count of 118462 stitches out of a possible 150415. Size 15.3" x 20.4".

With different settings this image can give a ridiculous number of colours - up to 400 even without blending!

Regards,

Richard

Edited to add: I've never before come across an image with so much scope for colour tweaking. Increasing the colour space divisions to 100 and adding blending (ie throw everything at it), the number of colours is off the scale, to an utterly impossible to stitch 8361!!!

[rcperryls]

I think that is a beautiful painting and will be a fantastic cross stitch project. Size depends on what you want and how you stitch it, the type of fabric you choose. Richard's conversion shows that it is definitely possible and depends on how many colors you want. I will be looking forward to your stitching this. Think it will be a lot of fun!

Carole

[kezibell]

I've never stitched on anything other than aida fabric, and at the moment I do like the 20 count, it seems to give the coverage I like.

Richard, does it make a difference using black fabric, I have only ever used the cream/ivory? And what does "4 colour space divisions" mean, I will look for that on my programme! I always imagined the more colours, the more detail, so I should keep it below 100.

[richardandtracy]

Using black fabric can be difficult with dark colours. I did have trouble initially, but when the light levels are good enough, it's OK. I am doing my current project on 28ct black evenweave and doing 2 over 1 tent stitch. It's possible, and I think due to the fact that about 50% of the picture is plain black, the saving in time of using black fabric exceeds the extra time needed for the dark colours by miles. I think it will save me a good 6 months on my current project by not stitching the background.

'Colour space divisions' is a term I used in my program to describe what the program was doing to try to reduce the range of thread colours used.
In a picture, each colour has a red, green & blue component with a value 0-255. So in the terminology I use, that is 255 colour space divisions and can permit over 16 million colours. It doesn't help a great deal in reducing the number of threads that a picture could use, so the unique red, green & blue values for each pixel are rounded a bit so that colours with similar RGB values all end up being selected for the same final thread colour.
With 1 colour space division, the RGB values would be rounded to 0 or 255. With 2 divisions, 0, 127 or 255. With 4 divisions, they are rounded to 0, 63, 127, 192 or 255. As you can see, the higher the number of divisions, the more potential colours there can be - it's the cube of (number of divisions + 1). With 4 divisions there can be up to 125 colours. However, there are a finite number of DMC threads, so inevitably there will be a limit to the number of thread colours that can be in a picture, and it's not always as high as the potential number of colours.

I am not sure (not knowing which program you have) what the terminology used will be. I suspect it will simply ask you for a target number of colours you want, and do the conversion that way round. My program allows more control of the conversion than most programs, so the way it goes about the conversion may be a little different from others. Having said that... I have tried comparable conversions with other programs, PC Stitch10, Ryijy and couple of freebies and found that the conversion with my program can be better, though the level of control makes getting dreadful conversions possible too (though it's unlikely I hope!). If you don't like the conversion from your program, download my program, convert the image in it, save the image, and you can edit/print in your current chart program if you wish - won't cost a penny.

Regards,

Richard.

[fccs]

I think that is a beautiful painting and will be a fantastic cross stitch project. Size depends on what you want and how you stitch it, the type of fabric you choose. Richard's conversion shows that it is definitely possible and depends on how many colors you want. I will be looking forward to your stitching this. Think it will be a lot of fun!

Carole

I agree with Carole. This is going to be a fabulous piece! Please share your progress with us.

[skitzzzzz]

Hi Kez
this will be fab charted go for it you will be pleased and I have to say I do love his paintings

[lavenderbee]

I agree with the others, a fantastic painting to stitch & lovely the artist gave you permission. Great colours, I love it. Look forward to your progress with this one.

[Rose]

I think that this will make a fabulous project.

I do think if you get to large of a number of shades you may mute the vibrance of the design. I would play with different color shading and see what works to best portray the original.

[NeedleAndFork]

Oh, I am so glad to see this! I have this image saved on my computer (or maybe a different but similar one by the same artist?) as a potential someday project. The vivid colors in it speak to me too! I will be watching your progress with great interest to see how yours turns out. That said, there are already charts made of this artists paintings I believe. I know I've seen them, though I'm not sure what company makes them or what kind of quality they are. The beauty of this painting is in all the shades of colors, I think it needs a high color range to truly capture it properly.

Richard - thanks for the explanation on the color space divisions on your charting software. I figured out that more divisions meant more colors, but knowing the actual way it's computed helps me understand more. One of thse days I'm going to find something small - just a couple of inches each way and let your program go nuts on it.. and try to stitch it. See, this is where having a full set of DMC comes in handy.. I can pull a bit for even just one stitch here anf there.

[Allyn]

... The beauty of this painting is in all the shades of colors, I think it needs a high color range to truly capture it properly. ....

I agree with Needleandfork. The more colors, the more true you can be to the original art. I disagree that too many colors will mute the vibrance. Just the opposite is true. They just have to be the right colors and Richard's program would do it justice.

[vanessanjf]

This will make such a gorgeous project. So many lovely colours. I will be looking forward to seeing you start it.

[kezibell]

Thanks everyone for your comments,when I get started I will post my updates.

Thank you Richard for the explanation, I'm still a newbie at this with only a few projects completed, so I'm hoping when I sit in front of my programme, it will make more sense!

As I said, being new to this, together with trying to understand the whole copyright rules........have you not broken the rules Richard by charting/converting the picture??? I was too scared to even try this before receiving my email confirmation.....all the copyright chat on here made me think I couldn't do it?

Also a bit unsure of the black aida, but I might buy a sample of 22 count first to compare the difference to 20 count. I like stitching with two threads, so I'm curious to see the coverage on this too.

[NeedleAndFork]

... The beauty of this painting is in all the shades of colors, I think it needs a high color range to truly capture it properly. ....

I agree with Needleandfork. The more colors, the more true you can be to the original art. I disagree that too many colors will mute the vibrance. Just the opposite is true. They just have to be the right colors and Richard's program would do it justice.

The beauty of this painting for me is in the subtle shades formed by the actual brush strokes. So within each little blob of color I'd think the subtle shading needs to be there - for that we need lots and lots of colors. I've tried converting an image by the same painter before and it just looked flat because it wasn't picking up enough colors.

[richardandtracy]

Thanks everyone for your comments,when I get started I will post my updates.
...As I said, being new to this, together with trying to understand the whole copyright rules........have you not broken the rules Richard by charting/converting the picture??? I was too scared to even try this before receiving my email confirmation.....all the copyright chat on here made me think I couldn't do it?

I do not believe I have broken the copyright rules.
Being in the UK I am subject to UK law, which means amongst other things the UK copyright law applies. I put a post up about the latest incarnation of UK copyright law, which came into force in October 2014 here: http://www.crossstitchforum.com/viewtop ... 40#p618340 (also links to the actual secondary legislation covering it so you can read the actual words of the law). This allows copies of work to be made for personal use (in my case, testing the software) and are not for direct or indirect financial gain (I don't charge for the software, so testing the software will not benefit me financially), so I believe I have complied with the regulations. Now, I am not a solicitor or barrister and cannot keep up with the precedents set in court, so my interpretation may not accord with the current legal interpretation of the law, especially as Common Law interpretation of fixed wording seems to change quite significantly over time. Nonetheless, it is not my intent to break copyright law, and if anyone can convince me that my interpretation is incorrect, I will remove it forthwith.

Regards,

Richard.

[LastingAllure]

That is going to look wonderful charted up!! So vibrant and gorgeous. Can't wait to see you working on it.

I will throw in that the only possible way to mute a colour is by mixing it with its complimentary colour. Also when you put a colour next to its complimentary colour it brightens both colours up. Mute colours also help make bright colours pop more. That's why when you're stitching a HAED you will have some weird colours mixed in with the dominate colour and think it's wrong but when you step back your eyes combine all of the colours to read as mixed. Also a painting rarely has solid colours and most cases every colour has many colours in it (zoom into any picture or painting on your computer and you will see the colours of all of the pixels).......I'm pretty sure that's all correct, has been a long time since I took colour theory.

[wendywombat]

Vibrant and it'll be an interesting project!

Enjoy!!

[richardandtracy]

...Richard - thanks for the explanation on the color space divisions on your charting software. I figured out that more divisions meant more colors, but knowing the actual way it's computed helps me understand more. One of thse days I'm going to find something small - just a couple of inches each way and let your program go nuts on it.. and try to stitch it. See, this is where having a full set of DMC comes in handy.. I can pull a bit for even just one stitch here anf there.

Thanks.
Let my program go nuts on it...
Oh help. It'll run out of symbols! I have only programmed in 600 symbols (and I still must deal with the 2 duplicated symbols Allyn let me know about).
Yesterday I did that 8361 colour conversion and while it was able to do the conversion in the colour conversion part of the program, it bombed out in the main part while allocating colour tables. I think it was an array memory issue - I use arrays that can be altered in size on the fly, unlike most C++ arrays which are fixed in size after declaration. I think there was a memory allocation issue in having 8360 increments to the array size. I may have to keep track of the colours in a different way, allocating space for 11500 colours to begin with (assume every DMC & Blend could be used) and then reducing the space after allocating everything later. It's the sort of stress testing of a program one doesn't normally think about.
However I must warn you: With as few as 600 colours (!) the chart symbol -thread mix cross reference table would be at least 12 pages long and the colour list for the colours used would be almost as long. Then if you were to print out 'Stitches Per Page' the number would go up to ludicrous numbers - for a 12 page chart I'd expect the 'Stitches per page' section to be around 50 pages. I went the whole hog with one image and got a 1240 page, 84Mb PDF for a 28 page chart...

Regards,

Richard

[felicity53]

I LOVE it. Good Luck with it. P.S. Also love the idea of it being a mothers day pressie to yourself. Think I may adopt that idea. hehe