Photograph-to-Cross Stitch Conversion

Everyone seems to love cross-stitching patterns, whether they are little samplers of doodles, cartoon characters or whatever, but what about designs showing someone's loved ones, or memorable scenes, captured on a photograph and then placed on Aida ready for the challenge of needle point?

Its not an enticing prospect, converting a picture on to cloth. The job is enormous, blocking out the squares, selecting the colours and so on. What if there was a way to automate it?

Well, now there is. I am offering a photograph-to-cross stitch chart conversion facility, for just £ 2.50 per photograph, a tiny amount of the work needed to do the conversion manually.

Since this is the anniversary of the maiden voyage of the Titanic, I have provided examples below of the process, using a hand-coloured version of a black and white photograph. The conversion routine breaks up the design into small element, and selects the closest DMC thread colour for that little cell.

The original was 512 by 300 pixels, but after conversion, the created chart is 3400 by 2000 pixels; to clarify just how big this is, it would cover a fair portion of the surface of a double bed (we've done it!). You can see for yourself how big it is here - about 6.4 Megabytes!

To prevent the user being swamped with an eiderdown sized sheet, my routine breaks up the chart into smaller, more manageable chunks. In the example below, I have broken the image up into a 5 x 5 grid, each image being A4 sized. Then, when you have finished with one grid, you move on to the next. Much better than dealing with a huge mosaic!

Below is a representation showing how a coloured square becomes a cross-stitch on the aida:

So, what do I get for my £ 2.50 ?

All the grid images, which when assembled, form the full image
A sheet telling you the threads you need, and the amount of each required

Before sending me your cash, please send me a copy of your photograph (in any image format) and I will provide a thumbnail image to provide a hint as to what the final image will look like. I can change the "block size" (how many 2x2 aida holes are used in the design, how many mosaiced images you will get as, as well as some other variables (I can manipulate the colours of the final image to some degree). Once you're happy with things, and payment processed, I can start work. You should get the results back within a day, either by email, or placed on my website for you to download.

I respect your privacy: photographs will be deleted from my server once you have received the images and are satisfied.

To discuss your requirements, please email me at paul@paullee.com.

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