Photo to Cross Stitch Pattern Guides

Choosing, cropping and sizing a photo so it becomes a chart worth stitching, and what to do when the preview looks wrong.

Most disappointing photo patterns go wrong before the chart is made: a busy background, a subject that fills a tenth of the frame, or light so flat that every color collapses into two browns. These guides start there. They cover which photos convert well and which don't, how to crop so the subject gets the stitches, how many stitches wide the pattern needs for the details you care about, and how many thread colors are enough. When a preview looks wrong, they walk through the usual causes and the setting that fixes each one, so you can adjust before you print rather than after you've stitched.