| You want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Give the pattern a different look (sepia, pop art, pastel) | Apply a Palette |
| Stitch it from the threads already in your drawer | Apply a Palette → Threads I own |
| Stitch it in Anchor, Cosmo or another brand instead of DMC | Switch Thread Brand |
| Make it warmer, brighter, softer or punchier | Adjust Colors |
| Buy fewer skeins and change thread less often | Simplify Colors |
| Clear empty colors out of the thread list | Remove unused colors |
| Reuse these colors on your next pattern | Save to my palettes |
Palette Tools
Rework every color in your pattern at once: recolor it with another palette, switch thread brands, warm or brighten it, cut it down to fewer threads, and save palettes.
- Where to find it
- Palette → Palette tools
Keyboard & modifiers
- Escape
- Cancel the change and put the colors back
- Enter
- Keep the change
Basics
The palette panel lets you change one color at a time. Palette tools are for the moments you want to change all of them at once: the pattern came out too dark, the shop only carries Anchor, a photo conversion handed you 60 threads, or you want the whole thing in sepia.
Open them with Palette tools at the bottom of the palette. Every tool except Remove unused colors shows the result on your chart while you try things, and nothing changes until you click Apply. Click Cancel and your colors are exactly as they were. Everything you apply can be undone with Cmd/Ctrl+Z, so it's safe to experiment.
Which tool for which job
The two that people mix up: Switch Thread Brand keeps the look and changes the threads. Apply a Palette changes the look.
Apply a Palette
For when you like the picture but not its colors. Maybe you want an old-photograph sepia for a family portrait, a set of colors you used on an earlier piece, or a pattern you can start tonight from your own stash.
Choose Apply a Palette and pick from the same list of color styles you see when turning a photo into a pattern: your saved palettes, the threads you own, starter palettes, Monochrome, Duotone, Art styles and more. Color Styles describes each one and which look it suits.
Click down the list and your chart recolors with each click, so you can compare five duotones in a few seconds. For styles that can grow or shrink, a Colors slider sets how many threads it uses. A saved palette or your stash is used as it is.
If a style looks wrong on your chart, switch How it maps:
- By lightness keeps the shading. Light parts get the palette's light colors and dark parts its dark ones, even if every hue changes. Best for sepia, duotones and gradients.
- Closest color keeps each color as near to itself as the palette allows, so a red stays as red as it can. Best for your saved palettes and your stash.
A thin before-and-after strip shows your chart's colors over what they'll become. Click it to see one small pair per color. If one color landed somewhere you don't like, say the sky turned green, click its pair and pick what it should be instead. The other colors keep following the method.
Click Apply to recolor the pattern.
Switch Thread Brand
For when the pattern is in DMC but your shop sells Anchor, or you already own a drawer of Cosmo. Every color is swapped for the closest-looking thread in the brand you pick, so the pattern looks as much like the original as that brand allows.
Choose Switch Thread Brand, then type the brand into Search brands or find it in the list. Popular brands come first, then hand-dyed, silk, wool, metallic and the rest. Click a brand and the chart previews the switch; click Apply to keep it. Diamond painting and fuse bead patterns get that craft's brands instead.
To look up just a few codes rather than convert a whole pattern, the DMC to Anchor conversion table is quicker.
Note: No two brands have the same range. Where the new brand has fewer shades, two of your colors can land on the same thread. Check any important areas, like skin or a sky, and adjust single colors afterward if needed.
Adjust Colors
For a pattern that's almost right: a photo conversion that came out cold and grey, a design that's a bit too dark for the fabric, colors that feel too loud.
Five sliders, each starting at 0 (no change). Drag one and the chart changes as you go.
| Slider | Use it when… |
|---|---|
| Brightness | The whole thing is too dark or too light. |
| Saturation | Colors are too loud (drag left) or too dull (drag right). All the way left is grayscale. |
| Contrast | It looks flat and muddy (drag right) or harsh (drag left). |
| Hue | You want every color shifted around the color wheel, for example to turn a blue design green. |
| Warmth | It feels cold (drag right for warmer reds and yellows) or too orange (drag left). |
Reset puts all five back to 0. Click Apply to keep the result.
To change only part of the chart, such as a background, select it first and tick Work within selection only. The box shows up only while you have a selection.
Stitch symbols hide while you adjust, so you can judge the colors themselves. They come back when you Apply or Cancel.
If your pattern uses a thread brand, it stays in that brand. Warm up a DMC pattern and every color becomes the closest-looking DMC shade, so the thread key still lists codes you can buy. Because of that, two colors that end up looking the same are merged into one thread when you apply.
Photo conversions often come out a little cold. A touch of Warmth, around +15 to +25, brings skin tones and wood back to life.
Simplify Colors
A photo conversion can hand you dozens of colors, many of them used for a handful of stitches. Each one is another skein to buy and another thread change. Simplify Colors cuts the list down to the number you choose, and the chart usually looks almost the same.
Choose Simplify Colors and drag Colors to keep. It starts at three-quarters of what you have now (12 of 16, say) and can go as low as 2. The chart previews the result as you drag, and the panel shows the change, for example 40 → 20 colors.
The colors you barely use go first. Each one is merged into the closest-looking color you're keeping, everywhere it appears. When you apply, the merged colors also leave the thread list, so there's nothing left to tidy.
How low to go depends on the pattern. Drag down until something you care about, like a face or a sunset, starts to lose its shading, then come back up a few. The how many colors to use guide has benchmarks by pattern type.
The Check tab's FLOW view has a Reduce colors… button that opens this same tool. Afterward, FLOW shows you how much confetti is left.
Note: Simplify merges by look, not by name. DMC 310 (Black) and DMC 3371 (Black Brown) look very close and may merge, even though they're different threads. If you need both, keep the count a little higher or set that color back by hand.
Remove unused colors
Colors can sit in your thread list with no stitches at all: you erased every stitch of a color by hand, or a photo conversion picked a color it never used. They make the thread list longer than the pattern needs.
The tool tells you how many there are, for example "3 colors are not used in this pattern". Click it and they're gone in one go. It never touches a stitch, so it's safe to run any time, and Cmd/Ctrl+Z brings them back. When every color is in use it says so and can't be clicked.
Save & load
Found colors you love? Keep them for the next pattern.
- Save to my palettes keeps this pattern's colors in your account. They show up under My palettes in Apply a Palette, and as a color style when you turn a photo into a pattern. Handy for a series of patterns in matching colors. If you've already saved the same palette, Stitchmate tells you rather than making a copy.
- Save to file… downloads the palette as a
.stitchmate_palettefile, to back it up or send it to a friend. - Load from file… adds the colors from a palette file to this pattern's thread list. Colors you already have are skipped.
- Save N selected… saves only the colors you've selected in the palette. It appears once two or more are selected.
How color matching works
Most of these tools come down to one question: which thread looks closest to this color?
Stitchmate answers it the way your eye would, not by comparing raw color numbers. It uses CIEDE2000, the measure of color difference used in textile and paint manufacturing. A dark red and a dark brown that look alike are treated as close, and two blues that look obviously different are treated as far apart, even if their codes are only a few digits apart. So conversions and merges tend to feel right when you hold the threads side by side. More in the color theory guide.
Tips & gotchas
- Try before you keep. Every tool except Remove unused colors previews on your chart first. Enter keeps the change, Escape puts the colors back.
- Undo always works. Cmd/Ctrl+Z undoes anything you applied here, even a brand switch you made several steps ago.
- Change threads with Switch Thread Brand, change the look with Apply a Palette.
- Adjusting keeps your brand. Brightening a DMC pattern gives you brighter DMC shades, not colors you can't buy.
- A good order after a photo conversion: Simplify Colors first, then Adjust Colors, then Switch Thread Brand if you stitch in another brand. Each step can be undone.
- Check the thread key before you shop. Adjusting and simplifying can merge colors, and a brand switch can send two colors to the same thread, so look over the list you'll buy from.