Cross stitch pattern from photo

A photograph becomes a grid of whole crosses. Crop to the subject, set how many stitches wide the chart is, then limit the DMC colors. Isolated stitches can be cleaned before you export a PNG or a PDF.

Prepare the photograph

Use even light. A shadow across a face becomes a band of extra colors. A busy room becomes more colors than the subject, so crop that out before you raise the stitch count. The file can be JPG, PNG, WebP, or GIF. Transparent PNG pixels stay unstitched fabric. HEIC photos from a phone need to be saved as JPG or PNG first. The picture is converted in the browser and is not uploaded.

Three photos, three settings

• Portrait: even light, crop out the room, about 20–30 colors. More colors add freckles as single stitches.
• Pet: crop to the face. Fur wants a slightly higher stitch count before it wants more colors.
• Logo or flat artwork: use as few colors as the original. Turn dithering off so edges stay solid.

How many colors

Start near 120 stitches wide and 25 colors. The color control runs from 2 to 90. Logos and pixel art usually sit around 5–15 colors, portraits around 20–30, and landscapes around 25–35. Detail comes from the stitch count. Adding colors past that mostly adds freckles. Free charts stop at 400 stitches on a side. A paid unlock for the PDF can go to 1000. The matcher uses the DMC numbers on the DMC color chart.

Confetti before and after

Confetti is a single stitch whose neighbors are a different color. Dithering creates that on purpose, and the dither control is off when you start. Confetti cleanup runs at medium unless you set it to off, weak, or strong. After the chart appears, the clean confetti button sweeps the grid, and the confetti brush removes the stitches you click. Raise the original photo overlay to see which of those stitches still match the picture and which were noise.

Finished inches for the fabric are on the cross stitch calculator. The written steps for the whole job are in how to make a pattern. For a single-crochet graph from a photo, use the crochet page.