The ones where you can put in a picture and come up with a chart? I won’t have time until after the wedding, but I was thinking that maybe for next Christmas or the Christmas after I could do a Star Wars stocking for my fiance. Of course, there’s no pattern for such a thing, and I was thinking of doing something from the movie posters, not something cartoonish. Have you tried that sort of thing and been satisfied? Dissatisfied?
Yes. I did one from a record album cover and it was astonishingly good. This was back when you sent it in to a service, not one you’d scan for yourself, so I don’t know how much better the technology has gotten, but the detail was extraordinary. You could tell them what size fabric you planned to use and the maximum number of colors; I used 22 count and no limit on the colors, and at 10 paces you’d think it was a photo.
Waaaaay back when I had a color bubblejet printer (since thrown out into the middle of the street, and now bubblejet printers are verboten) I used some online quickie software to make a pattern for my MIL. She was doing a plastic canvas project. The pattern was lovely, full color.
With only black and white printing available, I haven’t tried it again.
THAT being said…years and years and YEARS ago, I bought the acetate sheets with grid, that you can overlay on a picture and create a pattern. My husband is a BIG fan of Jim Reeves, and after a visit to the Jim Reeves museum outside of Nashville, I brought one of the shopping bags from the gift shop home and used the overlay to make the pattern. After creating a counted cross stitch sampler, Hubster used his router and made a nice frame. On our next trip to Nashville, we stopped by the museum again, and presented the sampler to Mary Reeves, Jim Reeves’ widow.
She thanked us profusely, and placed it in the museum.
Fast forward many years. Mary Reeves died in 1999, and her nephew sold the contents of the museum, which have since been scattered to the four winds. If anyone sees a sampler as I described above (at a garage sale or flea market or swap meet), PLEASE send me a PM!
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread.
~VOW
Years ago (it was maybe… 1998?) I sent a photo of my friend jumping her horse to a company that ran it through one of those programs, did some color correction, and edited out some portions of the image as requested.
Even with color corrections, and a basic palette of brown horse/green field/grey jump, it used over 50 DMC colors. It was a lot of work to complete. The result is quite remarkable, however. My friend has it hanging in her kitchen, lo these many years, alongside the original photo.
I’ve played around with them a bit, about 5 years ago now.
You can get some remarkable results, but I found a need to tweak a few variables - like limiting the number of colors. You don’t want to start from too detailed an image unless you really want to use a very fine canvas and enjoy minute details.
… called us up to tell us that his aunt had been SO touched by our cross stich (and since none of the family wanted the responsibility)… we’d just inherited a museum.
That’s how I was really hoping your post would end.
I’ve taken some images and set the resolution to 10 or 20 pixels per inch – voila, instant grid! (I used Photoshop–which can also reduce the number of colors, but cheaper apps can do it, too).