Tips on converting Photos to Charts!
Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 10:05 am
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!!!
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!!!
Thank you so much!!!!