Tips on converting Photos to Charts!

[StitchesCovenMags]

Hi! I was just reading a post about converting a photo to chart and since my advice would have been a bit late in the day, I thought I'd give you all the benefit of what I've found out whilst charting photos for the shop!

Firstly, I haven't found the perfect programme for doing this task - ours is a £500 professional software programme, and it is more about knowing about how photography works which gives the best results.Many companies professing to turn any photo to chart, just scans the picture in and churns out a chart regardless of the thousands of colours (and cost to buy them!!!) and this really annoys me! ....

So girls and boys, here are a few good tips!...

Firstly, good old fashioned 35mm pictures work best - no pixels!

Make sure that whatever picture you choose is shows large objects ; tiny fiddly people or objects just don't chart! Remember the constraints of cross stitch itself - you can only stitch in limited directions!

So - you are probably using a digital image. So, what we do, is process it through a photo suite and take down the Dpi's - this is the 'Dots per inch'. By doing this you'll have less pixilation.There is normally a drop-down number, so just change to the lowest number available. Save the picture and then scan it into your cross stitch programme.

Whilst editing your picture, you may also consider cropping it to take out any unwanted sections from the photograph.

You can also take number of colours down ; there will be less definition of course but those on a budget may find this helpful.

To be honest, I'm not a massive lover of charted photos (which is probably why I'm so fussy about how I like them to appear!) but the ones which DO work fantastically are the ones which are transferred from colour to black and white of sepia. Very often, if someone brings me a pic of their lovely black & white pussy cat, I'll often suggest we transfer it to black & white. The up side to this of course that the colours drastically reduce and the whole project is much more affordable!You can do this again, in a photo suite or, possibly your cross stitch programme may let you scan in greyscale (mine does!).

Hope this helps ; I'll keep an eye on your replys as you may probably jog my memory for bits I've forgotten!!!

[Nachstenliebe]

You gave me a great idea! I have this one pic of my husband's submarine as it deployed in 2007... but no matter what I did to the pic the sub always came out purple.. I never through of switching the whole thing to a black and white photo.. Thank you so much!!!!
Faith

[ali-cat]

Thank you!! I do believe you have just saved me a lot of grey hairs and wrinkles!! I never thought of reducing the dots per inch or indeed doing one in black and white!!

Must go play!!

[skitzzzzz]

iam not a company or shop . i bought the best software i could afford which was £200 plus
for me ,personal use
i offered to help as when i origionally needed help there was none available
i dont ask for anything in return
ok some turn out really good some not so good
but thats life
i tweak and play and hope people like is all