Headache over Pattern making program

[Lenne]

Hi there, I am about ready to pull my hair out with frustration! I've been working on trying to make a pattern from a picture for the last day or so, and no matter how much I tweak the photo I keep getting these horrible patches of colour like this:



Is this normal? Do I just carry on stitching the pattern or should I try to tweak it some more? I'd really, really appreciate any input because I am so frustrated hehe!

[Mabel Figworthy]

Sweet kitty!

When you say horrible patches of colour, do you mean the colour is horrible, or the fact that there is a big block of it? If the former, then I would tweak using a shade card. If the latter, well, it depends on a few things. One is how many colours you've allowed the programme to use. The more colours, the more subtle the shading, but also the more confetti. So for more shading, allow more colours. The other thing that causes blocks of colour is if stranded cotton simply doesn't come in enough colours, or the right ones. You are trying to catch a real-life image using a palette of perhaps 400 colours, many of which are irrelevant so in effect there are even fewer usable colours. It's an inherent characteristic of stitching, although you can diminish it a bit by blending and so almost doubling the number of available shades.
hope that helps!

[Lenne]

Hey Mabel! I meant the blocks in the picture sorry (blushes). I've put the setting to allow any amount of threads to be used, this picture is actually asking for 94 colours (!!!) I've tried sharpening, smoothing, darkening, lightening the photo and the same thing keeps happening. Not entirely sure what blending is - is it when you take the colour surrounding it and just find a colour between the block and surrounding colour and add it in between? I can give that a go- it might be fun If it doesn't work would it still look okay to carry on stitching regardless just ignoring the fact parts of it are blocky?

[destructiveernie]

I think and I'm sure Mabel or others will correct me if I'm wrong, Blending is when you use 2 strands of different colour thread to make one stitch.

Do you mean that you thought the pattern would have more colour changes and confetti stitches that just blocks of colour?

[ali-cat]

I have virtually given up on making my own charts after the headaches I had when working on my Château design (please note – it's not actually MY Château!!) The chart looked 'okay-ish' but when I came to stitch it I discovered that it was giving my bright purple sky and green walls – the wall I fixed but gave up on the sky until everyone here helped me solve the problem.

Have you already got the colours in your stash which you're not sure about? – if so, have a look at them in real life and see what you think. If you haven't got them let us know what they are and we can post photos for you, to see if that helps.

[Lenne]

Hey Emma!

To be honest I've never used a photo to pattern program before so wasn't entirely sure what to expect, I am just worried that I've done something wrong to have this occur but if this is normal then that's great, I can get the threads together and have a go at it The two different colours on the same needle sounds very, very advanced and I wouldn't know which two colours to use (I am still very much a newbie) so I will probably have to avoid doing blending for now.

Hey ali-cat!

Not actually checked what colours I have in my stash against the colours it's recommending yet. If I ignore the blocking I can reduce it to 50 colours, which sounds a lot less scary, and it still looks pretty cute I forgot to mention I am using PM Stitch Creator 3.0, not sure if this one is good or not but it doesn't seem too scary and works on Windows 7 I will have a quick rummage around now and see what I have and compare.

Thanks everyone, you're all being absolutely fantastic!

[destructiveernie]

http://www.crossstitchforum.com/viewtop ... =4&t=13686

This thread is about different programmes and mentions some allow you to test but not print or save but perhaps you could use it to see what differences in the patterns there are.

[Nachstenliebe]

I remember the purple sky Ali!
I've noticed sometimes playing with the photo first helps.. when working with one photo of my husband's sub it wanted the sub to be a god awful purple! But once I changed the brightness of the photo it dulled the outrageous colors a bit...
Faith

[xstitch1]

I would get the picture on photoshop first and play with the colours a bit, then I will import it to the cross stitch software and I will usually get a good result. But 94 colours seems a lot to me though! Maybe restrict the colours to .... say 30 or 35?

[Ketta]

I don't know what program you're using, but I can give you a couple of tips I've figured out from using PC Stitch Pro.

When you finish making a pattern and want to see what it will look like when stitch, under 'View' select 'View Pattern', and it will give you a mock-up of the finished work. This will give you an idea what you might need to tweak it, like resizing, adjusting colour/brightness/contrast, etc.

During the pattern making process, there is a selection I've found very useful when making very realistic patterns called 'blending' (or something very like that). It softens the division of colour quite a lot, for example, with your cute kitty picture, those blocks of solid colours will blend much better for a realistic texture. This option tends to use more colours, but to me it very worth it.

Good luck..