Questions and Answers

Q. Why use a photo as a foundation for a cross-stitch design? Why not just draw on a piece of graph paper?

A. Many designers do both. If you have the ability to draw your own designs on graph paper, that's wonderful. Keep it up. It's a special talent that sets your work apart from others.

If you're not happy with your own artwork a photograph is as close a medium to graph art as you can get. Both use tiny squares of colours, merged together to create an image. A photo already has shading, texture and realistic colours that can enable you to create the design you want.

Q. The colours in my printed design are not the same as the ones I viewed in my image editing program or cross-stitch program. Why?

A. PC monitors and televisions use the RBG colour method to display images. Unfortuneately, not all image editing programs allow you to align your monitor to colour match. Adobe Photoshop  does when you intially install the program.. If your image editing program is able, you might try converting your image to CMYK. There is a good article explaing CMYK here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK

You can also find a Monitor Calibration Wizard program at this site for free.

http://www.hex2bit.com/products/product_mcw.asp 

You may find more comparible results by adjusting the brightness and contrast of your image in your image editing program.

Some cross-stitch programs, such as PatternMaker, allow you to make adjustments to your image prior to importing. This may be very helpful and you should use the help section of your program for more information.

Q. Why does my pattern turn out so large? If  I  try to make it smaller, I loose detail.

A. Keep in mind that the photograph that you are using is made up of thousands of pixels that you are applying to a much smaller design area. The data cannot be applied without some lose of detail. I have had more success concentrating on  only a portion of the photo like the pumpkin in the Step by Step area. You may also try a fabric count that is higher. Instead of 14count, try 22count. That produces a design area that is almost half the size. 

If you are using a scanner to acquire your image, try adjusting the dpi (dots per inch) anywhere from 75 dpi up to1200dpi or within your scanner's limits.

 A number of  the cross-stitch programs offer a preview where you can experiment with designs changing the design size, number of colours and fabric count to help find a pattern you are happy with.

Q. Why does my design, when finished stitching, appear more detailed the farther away I stand from it?

A. You've reproduced  the image captured by  the settings (distances0 as seen by the camera and at the same time "zoomed in "on the specific area of the photo you are working with. Whenever you enlarge (crop or zoom in) on a digital image you  are not adding any new information to the image.  You are merely stretching the existing information. It is what is referred to as pixelating.

   If you are able to change lenses or settings, try taking several pictures in different modes and distances. This way you can preview designs and find the one most satisfying for you.

Backstitching certain areas sometimes distorts the distance effect as well.

Q. I'm very happy with the picture I've choosen but when applied to the cross-stitch program, I see alot of weird colours where they shouldn't be. A picture with a person with red hair comes out with alot of purple and green pixels.

A.  Photography is all about light. Your camera captured all the aspects of light and shadows in that setting. It captured an image made up of  thousands of colours. The human eye does not equate all the blended colours, merely groups them to form a few colours of that tone .  When applied to the stitch program the program attempted to condense all the data using the most plausible blended colours. It doesn't have a disernable human eye so you may have to replace these colours manually or try several different versions of your photo in an image editing program. 

Reduce the number of colours used in the image editing program before applying it to the stiching program.  

I like to use an artistic filter that makes the picture look like a painting and this type of filter automatically reduces colours for me.

 Some image programs allow you to Posterize the photo. This allows you to choose a specific level of tones.