Image Import

Basics

Image Import turns a photo, a painting, a logo or a piece of pixel art into a pattern matched to real thread colors. It is the photo-to-pattern converter, and it works in three steps, named in the bar at the top of the screen:

1. Photo: say what kind of image it is, and optionally crop, straighten or remove the background.
2. Pattern: choose what you're making, the size, the fabric and threads, the colors, the detail and how much to clean up. The preview is the real pattern and updates as you go.
3. PDF: the PDF itself, with its settings and the way to get it.

Start from the home screen: Create → From an image ("Convert a photo or artwork"), then pick a file.

The Photo step is quick and optional. The Pattern step is where you'll spend your time, and every change shows in the preview straight away. Press Continue to move on, or click a finished step in the top bar to go back.

You don't have to finish in one sitting. Your photo and settings save as you go, so you can close the tab and pick up later (see Leaving and coming back).

Open in editor is not a step. It's for when you want to move individual stitches by hand, and you can skip it entirely if all you need is the PDF.

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Photo step

Under your photo are three optional tools: Replace photo, Crop & straighten and Erase background. Skip them if the photo is already what you want. Picked the wrong photo? Drop a new one anywhere on the page.

Changed your mind about a crop or an erase? Click the × on that tool's button to undo it.

Accepted formats: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC/HEIF and TIFF. HEIC and TIFF are converted in your browser first. An animated GIF asks which frame to use. Any other image your browser can show opens as it is.

Press Continue to make the pattern.

Photo or pixel art

The panel asks What are you converting? with two cards:

The app badges its guess Suggested. If it guessed wrong, pick the other card. A logo or a flat illustration is usually happier as a photo; a sprite with hard square edges is pixel art.

For pixel art, the app looks for an upscaled pixel grid (a 32 × 32 sprite saved at 256 × 256, say) and says Pixel grid detected with the size it becomes. Pixel art is limited to 1,000 stitches per side. A bigger image shows Too big for pixel art with two ways on: Crop to fit or Convert as a photo.

Crop & straighten

Use this to keep just the part of the photo you want to stitch, and to fix a crooked shot. Done keeps your changes, Cancel throws them away.

• Pick a shape that matches where the piece will end up: a frame (8 × 10, 5 × 7, 11 × 14, A4), a square, or a hoop. Free lets you draw any rectangle, and Original keeps the photo's own proportions. Hoop shows how a round crop would look in a hoop, but the pattern itself stays square.
• Straighten a tilted horizon with the dial (up to 45° either way). For small nudges, [ and ] move it half a degree.
• Turn, mirror or flip if the photo came in sideways or you want it facing the other way. Handy for text, since mirrored lettering won't read.
• Hold to compare (or hold \) to flash back to the original and check you haven't cropped out something important.

Erase background

Want your subject stitched on bare fabric instead of a stitched-in backdrop? Erase the background and those areas become no stitches at all, which also means less to stitch. Two ways to do it, and you can mix them.

• Let the app do it. Switch on Erase it for me and it finds the subject and clears the rest. The first time, it downloads the remover (you'll see a percentage), and only that once.
• Do it yourself. Erase (E) paints over what should be bare fabric. Restore (R) paints back anything erased by mistake, which is how you fix the app's edges. Magic wand (M) is the fast one for a plain backdrop: click it and the whole background goes. If it takes too little or too much, drag Tolerance: toward Similar colors to clear more, toward Exact color to clear less.

For fine edges like hair or fur, zoom in and use a small brush (S and W make it smaller and larger); the brush stays the same size on screen, so zooming in is what makes it more precise. Erased areas show as a checkerboard. Made a mess? Undo is right under the photo.

Press Done to keep it. You can bring the background back later with the × on the Erase background button.

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Pattern step

This is where the pattern gets made. The preview in the middle is the real pattern, and it redraws every time you change a setting, so there's no "apply" button to hunt for.

Work down Settings on the left: what you're making, size, threads, colors, detail, clean up. In that order, because each choice shapes the next. Size changes how many colors make sense, for example, so set it first. The FLOW score and Your palette stay at the bottom of the list as you scroll, so you can watch what each change does to them.

Need to fix the photo? Edit in the top bar takes you back to the Photo step.

What are you making?

Start by picking your craft: cross stitch, needlepoint, diamond painting, fuse beads or C2C crochet (you'll only see the ones you've turned on). It changes the wording below and the look of the preview, so diamond painting shows drills and fuse beads show beads.

Size

Size is the biggest decision on this step: it sets how much detail the pattern can hold, how big it stitches up, and how long it takes. The Size row shows the grid (for example 150 × 112), the finished size on your fabric, and an estimate of the hours to stitch it. Use Units beside the heading to switch between stitches and physical units.

Open the row to choose:

• Custom size: your own width and height, linked to keep the photo's proportions, with a button to restore the aspect ratio. From 3 to 2,000 stitches per side.
• Small (80 stitches on the longest side, a gift or ornament), Medium (150, a classic framed piece, recommended), Large (250, detailed wall art) or Extra large (400, a gallery-sized piece).

The finished size and time to stitch stay on screen as you choose, so you can see what each size costs you.

Fabric & threads

Tell the app what you'll be stitching with, so the pattern uses things you can actually buy. (For other crafts this section is called Canvas & threads, Canvas & drills and so on.)

• Thread brand: pick the brand you'll shop from. Every color in the pattern is matched to a real thread of that brand, so the brand also decides the shades available.
• Strands: how many strands you'll stitch with.
• Fabric: type and color, shown as a swatch of the weave. The preview is drawn on it, so you can judge how the finished piece will look on your fabric. Diamond painting picks its Drill shape (square or round) here instead.
• Only DMC threads I own (it names your brand): appears when you have that brand's threads in your stash. Switch it on and every stitch uses a thread you already have, so no shopping trip.

Colors

• Style: Natural keeps the photo's own colors. A named style recolors the whole thing, for a pop-art look, say. See Color styles.
• Color count: the most colors the pattern may use, anywhere from 2 to 256. It's a ceiling, not a target: similar shades can merge, so you may end up with fewer. Fewer colors means a simpler, calmer pattern with fewer skeins to buy. Typical for this size shows a sensible range to start in.

Fine-tune is for a photo that looks too dark, flat or washed out. It adjusts the photo's Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue before the colors are picked. It also has the color algorithm setting, which you can leave alone unless a result looks off.

Color styles

Instead of matching the photo, you can restrict the pattern to a deliberate palette: Monochrome, Duotone, Tritone, Tracing, or Art styles like Pop Art, Earth Tones and Vaporwave. An Art style starts from its own five to seven colors and can grow to 30 with shades of those. Open Style to browse, and All styles to get back to the list. The whole catalog is in Color styles.

Detail

How much of the photo's fine texture should survive? One slider, four stops: Simple (fewer colors, bold shapes), Balanced (good detail, still pleasant to stitch), Detailed (rich gradients, more colors) and Photo (as much detail as possible, the most colors). Balanced is a good place to start. If the pattern looks busy or fiddly, drop a stop; if faces or fine lines are turning to mush, go up one.

Fine-tune has the individual dials behind the slider, including Dither, which mixes stitches of nearby colors to imitate shades you don't have. Change one and the line under the slider says "Your own …".

Clean up

Photos turn into confetti: single stitches sitting alone, away from others of their color. They're tedious to stitch, because a lone stitch can mean threading a needle for one cross. Clean up removes them.

• How much is left tells you how much confetti the pattern has. Press Show to see exactly where it is.
• Strength is how hard Clean up works, from Off to Strong. Higher is a calmer pattern, but it can also swallow small details, so raise it a step at a time and check the preview.
• If it eats something you want, protect it with the Keep details brush, below.

It's the same cleanup as the editor's Confetti Cleanup tool, so a given strength does the same job in both.

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Keep details brush

Clean up doesn't know an eye's highlight from a stray stitch, so it can take the light out of an eye, a line of text or a whisker. The fix: tell it what to leave alone. Press Paint in the "Preserve details" row and paint over those spots.

• Keep (B) marks what to protect. Erase (E) un-protects it.
• Kept areas are tinted on the preview, so you can see what's covered. Zoom in for small spots (S / W change the brush size). To move around while painting, hold Space and drag, or use two fingers.
• Press Done (Esc or Enter) when finished.

Protected areas are left exactly as they are by default. If you want a little tidying there too, Strength here goes from As they are to Like the rest.

It only works while Clean up is on. Paint it last: a new crop or photo wipes it, and drafts don't save it.

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Backstitch

For crafts that use it, the last section adds outlines drawn from your image: the fine lines that make eyes, edges and lettering crisp. Turn it on and tune it here, and see Backstitch for more.

FLOW score

The FLOW score answers one question: will this pattern be pleasant to stitch? It's always in view, and it shows how much your last change moved it.

Open it to see what's dragging the score down: too much confetti, scattered color blocks, too many colors, or too many threads to juggle. Each problem comes with a fix you can press, such as merging look-alike colors, dropping a color that's barely used, or cleaning up harder. Point at a fix first and it shows the score you'd get, so you can try before you commit.

The editor's Check tab shows the same thing. See FLOW Score.

Your palette

Your palette lists every color in the pattern, and it's where you make the pattern yours. Pick a color and you can:

• Highlight it on the chart to see where it's used. See Highlight on chart.
• Change the thread to a different one. See Change thread.
• Turn it into fabric, so those stitches are left bare. Stitch it again undoes that.
• Remove it, and Restore it if you change your mind.

Change thread

Don't like the thread the app picked for a color, or want one you already own? Change thread… shows a picker, and each thread you click is tried on the preview straight away. Use it keeps it, Cancel goes back. Your photo at the top returns to the color from the photo.

Your choices stick: they follow the color if you change the color count or style, and drafts remember them. Editing colors later, in the editor, is in Editing Colors.

Highlight on chart

Wondering where a color goes, or whether it's worth keeping? Switch on Highlight on chart and the preview shows only the selected colors, with the rest faded. Show all turns it off.

Pixel art settings

Pixel art has the same list, with a few differences:

• Size: by default one pixel becomes one square, so the pattern is exactly as big as the image. Choose Custom to scale it.
• Colors: choose Exact colors to keep every pixel's color as it is, or Threads to match them to real threads. The thread brand is greyed out while colors are exact, since there's nothing to match. Colors to keep pins the ones that must not change, and Advanced mode has more controls.
• Fabric & threads adds the same "only threads I own" option as photos.

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The preview

Use the bar under the preview to look at your pattern in different ways:

• Pattern / Finished look: the chart stitch by stitch, or the pattern stitched and framed on a wall. Finished look has several scenes, and Download this scene saves one as an image, handy for sharing.
• Original: flips to your photo so you can check what the pattern lost. Press it again to come back.
• View: changes how the chart is drawn. See View presets.
• Zoom, and Open in editor at the right end.

Pinch or use the zoom keys to zoom in on a detail, and drag to move around. A small map in the corner shows where you are.

View presets

Flat shows plain colors, Flat with grid adds the grid so you can count stitches, and Realistic draws thread on fabric (or drills, beads or yarn for other crafts). Use Flat with grid to judge detail and Realistic to judge how it will feel on the wall. This changes only how the preview looks, not the pattern or the PDF.

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PDF step

This is the printable pattern. Scroll through its pages in the middle to check it looks the way you want before you pay for it. Paper size, chart style and the rest are in the settings on the left.

To get the file, press Get PDF (it shows the price), or Use 1 unlock if you've already bought some. Once a pattern is unlocked it stays yours: come back any time and download it again.

The PDF always matches the Pattern step. Change a setting there and the PDF is rebuilt when you return, so you never end up with a PDF that disagrees with the preview. To change stitches by hand, go back to the Pattern step and use Open in editor.

The settings are the same ones as the editor's PDF export. See The PDF step in photo import and the rest of PDF Export.

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Open in editor

Open in editor (at the right end of the bar under the preview) is for when the converted pattern needs hand work: fixing a stray stitch, adding text or backstitch, repainting an area.

The first time, it stops to ask Open in the editor? It's a fair question: if the pattern already looks right and you only want to print it, Get PDF does that without the editor. You can always come back to the size and colors later. From the second time on, Don't ask again is offered.

From the editor you can:

• Paint and erase with the Brush and other tools.
• Adjust the palette with Palette Tools.
• Clean up remaining confetti with the Confetti Cleanup tool.
• Organize content across Layers.
• Export to PDF, PNG, or other formats.

On the converter embedded in the photo-to-pattern page, there are two steps, Photo and Pattern, and Open in Editor is the top-right button.

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Leaving and coming back

Close the tab, shut the laptop, or press ×: your photo and settings are kept as a draft. Next time, open Finish converting on the home screen and the conversion is waiting on the step you left it on.

The one catch: if you press × very early, before the first save, the app warns that you'll lose the photo and settings. After that, leaving is safe.

Refreshing the page is safe too. You land back on the same step.

One thing a draft doesn't hold: Keep details brush strokes. Paint those last.

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Back to Size & Colors

Already in the editor and want different settings for the same photo? Click Size & colors at the top left of the editor, or choose File → Back to Size & Colors…. On a phone, open the menu and tap Back to image import. For a different photo, use File → Import New Image….

If you've changed stitches by hand, it asks first, Go back to size & colors?, and says how many hand edits you made. Nothing changes until you press on in the converter.

The converter opens with your photo and settings. The top bar changes for this trip:

1. Open in editor is the main button, with Get PDF beside it. The × at the top left cancels and returns to the editor with your pattern as you left it.
2. When you press Open in editor, it asks Which pattern goes to the editor?
   • Use these new settings makes the pattern again from your photo with the size, colors and detail set here. It tells you how many hand edits that replaces, or that nothing is lost when there are none.
   • Keep my edited pattern takes you back to your pattern exactly as you left it. Nothing set in the converter is used.
   • Stay here closes the question.

Using the new settings makes a fresh pattern. It doesn't merge with your edits. To keep your current version too, duplicate or export it first.

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On a phone

A phone gets the same three steps and the same settings. Only the layout changes: the settings open in a sheet instead of a side panel.

• Pattern: the two settings people change most, Size and Detail, are one tap away under the preview. All settings opens the full list. When you paint with the Keep details brush, one finger paints and two fingers move the preview.
• Open in editor is in the Menu, next to Edit photo.
• PDF: check the pages, then buy or download from underneath. The PDF settings open from the summary at the top.

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Tips & gotchas

• Crop tight. The less background clutter, the better the conversion. Tips for choosing the best photo apply here. Erase background helps when the subject should sit on bare fabric.
• Pick the size before the colors. The typical color range and the time to stitch follow the size.
• Start with fewer colors. More colors doesn't mean more detail; it usually means more confetti. Raise the count if you're losing something that matters.
• Pixel art is strict. It expects clean PNGs with crisp pixel edges. JPEGs and heavily compressed images make false colors.
• Protect small details before cleaning hard. Paint eyes and text with Preserve details, then raise Strength.
• Paint the Keep details brush last. A new crop or photo wipes it, and drafts don't save it.
• Try the FLOW score's fixes before fiddling with sliders. Each one tells you the score it would give before you press it.
• Trust the preview. What you see is what the PDF and the editor get.
• Undo in the editor won't take you back to the converter. To change the size or colors after editing, use Size & colors at the top left of the editor.

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FAQ

What image formats can I import?

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC/HEIF and TIFF. HEIC and TIFF are converted in your browser first, and an animated GIF asks which frame to use. For pixel art, PNG or WebP works best.

How big can my pattern be?

The presets go from Small (80 stitches on the longest side) to Extra large (400). Custom size takes 3 to 2,000 stitches per side. Pixel art is limited to 1,000 per side.

Why does my pattern have so many scattered single stitches?

That's confetti. Raise Strength in Clean up, or use the fix the FLOW score offers, and protect fine details with the Keep details brush.

Do I have to open the editor to get a PDF?

No. Continue takes you to the PDF step, where you set up the PDF and get it.

Can I go back and change the settings after editing?

Yes. Use Size & colors at the top left of the editor, or File → Back to Size & Colors…. When you press Open in editor again, choose Use these new settings or Keep my edited pattern.

I closed the converter halfway. Is my work lost?

No. It's under Finish converting on the home screen, and it reopens on the step you left.