Guides / Making your chart
Preparing a picture before turning it into a chart
The converter can only work with the picture you give it. A few edits on your phone beforehand change the result more than any setting afterwards.
Five minutes of editing before converting beat every setting afterwards. Your phone's photo editor is enough: give the converter a subject that is large, clear and stands apart from the background.
What you need
- The original photo, not a screenshot
- The photo editor on your phone or computer
Start from the original
Copies are compressed: little blocks of colour, which the chart faithfully turns into unexpected stitches.
- No need for a huge file: a chart is at most 200 stitches wide, so 1,000 pixels is plenty.
- No filters, no phone “enhancements”: the chart would pick threads your subject lacks.
- ✓ The photo as it came off the camera
- ✗ The copy sent through a messaging app, or a screenshot
Crop tight
The edit that matters most: on an 80-stitch chart, a dog filling half the picture has only 40 stitches to exist in.
What makes a good photo to convert: a subject that fills the frame, clear contrast and a plain background. Each fix makes the chart cleaner.- Open the photo in the editor and choose “Crop”.
- Pick the shape of your future frame: square, 4:5 or 3:4. The chart's height will follow.
- Close in until the subject almost touches the edges.
- Leave a little air around an animal's head.
- Save a copy, so the original stays untouched.
Straighten
A tilted horizon shows far more in stitches than in a photo: straight lines turn into staircases.
- The editor's “Straighten” tool corrects a few degrees.
- The converter's “Turn the picture” only does quarter turns.
- ✓ A level horizon: an even line of stitches
- ✗ A tilted horizon: a staircase with uneven steps
Brighten a dark photo
On a dark photo every shadow lands on the same threads, 310 and 3371, and the modelling disappears.
- Raise the shadows, or failing that the brightness, until you can see detail in the dark areas.
- Add a little contrast if the subject melts into the background.
- Stop before the whites turn into one patch: a blown highlight becomes a flat area of B5200.
- Leave the saturation alone: the converter's “Colour brightness” does it better, with real threads.
Simplify the background, erase the clutter
A busy background is the first cause of disappointing charts: the converter spends its colours there and scatters single stitches.
- Crop again, if the background only fills the edges.
- Blur it with portrait mode or the editor's blur tool.
- Or cut the subject out: the converter's “Remove the background” leaves bare fabric.
- Erase a lead or a power line, or you will be fixing it in the pattern maker.
- ✓ A blurred background, melted into two or three calm colours
- ✗ Sharp leaves behind the subject: wasted threads, confetti everywhere
Tip. Do keep the small white glint in an animal's eye: a single stitch of White or B5200 brings the eye to life. Lost in the conversion? Add it back by hand.
Compare two versions
Torn between two crops or two brightness levels? Convert both, at the same width and the same number of threads.
1 minute to run two versions through the converter and decide