Note: If you are looking for information on how to cross stitch, Kathleen Dyer and About.com's forums the have good tutorials. The tips here are to help you generating good patterns using MyPhotoStitch.com
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Use the “Enhance Image” option in the advanced form. This option boosts contrast in the image, which can produce more vibrant patterns.
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| Without image enhancement | With image enhancement |
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Use the “Dither Image” option in the advanced form. This option breaks up large sections of a single color to produce a smoother looking effect.
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| Without dithering | With dithering |
With image enhancement and dithering
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For illustrations, shrink the image in an image editor on your machine. When MyPhotoStitch.com creates a pattern, it first shrinks your image down so that it is 1 pixel per stitch. However, the resizing algorithms are optimized for photographs, and so for illustrations they sometimes cause undesired blurring and ugly results, especially when using a relatively small number of colors. For example, when converting the following image into a 20x23 pattern using only 4 thread colors, the results are not ideal. However, by manually shrinking the image down to 20x23 and touching it up, the result becomes much better:
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| Original Image | Original Pattern | Resized Image | Resized Pattern |
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For images with a complex background, use an image editor to remove the background. This helps especially if you are looking for a simpler pattern that uses fewer thread colors. For example, if you wanted to cross stitch a mountain tapir using at most 10 thread colors, removing the background can significantly help. Furthermore, the resulting pattern has far fewer stitches, and so should be easier to do.
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| Original Photo by Elissa Berver | Original with background removed | |
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| Pattern without removing the background | Pattern with background removed |