How to choose a photo
or art work that will make a good pattern!
To start, the photo or
art work can be color or B/W. A black and white photo
or art work can be toned to a soft color called Sepia to make it look
like an old photo. If its
color look for a photo that does not have a lot of dark back ground.
Say the
person has black hair or dark brown and the background is the same
color. This
would be hard to do a good cross stitch. coupon PP032538 Take a few
minutes look at the
photo and ask yourself if the picture has good contrast between
colors. If you can look and see
the person and tell where the hair leaves off and the wall starts
then it should work.
Also, for example, if a person is wearing a solid color top and you
can't see anything but
solid white with no changes for folds or a pocket then it may not be
a good choice.
Best results are obtained from clear photographs taken in bright
natural daylight.
Avoid unwanted reflections, in cars for example, as they will be
clearly seen in the
finished work. We can remove small objects against a general
background, for
example power lines against the sky or a socket outlet on a wall. A
simple
background looks more realistic than no background. A face in shadow
will look
darker than the person in real life. A white house photographed in
shade will
look gray. If the photograph is faded the finished work will look
faded.
The best way to explain
it is, if the picture is not a good photo that you can look at
and see the detail then pass it up. And if you can't see detail in
the photo, you won't
see it in the finished cross stitch. It's not like a pattern you buy
in the store where
everything is outlined to make it stand out. What we do here is copy
the photo to
cross stitch using the exact color and detail as the original photo.
Go back to our sample
page and look carefully at
the one we have shown you and use that as a
guide to pick your photo to have made into a cross stitch.
Next the size of the
photo or art work. We have made patterns from wallet
size photos with good results. It's true that the bigger the photo
the better the
cross stitch. Portraits make real good cross stitch patterns as you
can see on the
sample page. To have real good detail so you can see faces with
detail you have to
remember 14 count is only 14 stitches per inch and if the face is
only 1/2 inch
across you only have seven stitches so detail is not very good. We
think faces
need 40 to 50 stitches across, for recognition and about 100 for a
close-up portrait.
To get around this a smaller stitch count would be the answer. 18
count would
be a good choice in doing a portrait of a photo that you want of one
or two people.
A photo of many people such as a group photo where people are small
in
the photo, 22 count would be the way to go. 22 count takes longer,
but the results
are really good and worth the extra time spent in doing the
pattern.
We can do a lot with a
photo to make it a good candidate for a pattern such as
working color and removing marks in the photo. The face is where we
still have
a challenge doing much to improve it. We have had requests to make
gray hair
brown again and to change the color of a house or to make a bad paint
job
look new again. We can't change the photo in any of the ways just
mentioned.
It all comes down to good picture taking and nothing less than that.
One more thing that can
make or break a good pattern. That is having the
photo sent by e-mail after being scanned and not having things set
properly at your end.
If you send your work via e-mail, make sure what you send us is what
you
want and the color and detail is also what you want. The best
patterns are made
from a print. We hope this helps a little in selecting the photo or
art work you send us.
If you are not sure,
send the work to us and we will let you know if its
something that will work. We do not charge to look at a photo to see
if it's a
good candidate for your pattern. It can even be put into our
preview
page for
you to look at and see how it will look.
