Truth be told, it's been more than 15 years since I've embroidered or cross-stitched a single stitch. I thought I was done with it. Old news. No longer interested in doing any of my own, even if I do still have a soft spot for other people's handiwork with needle and that delightfully colorful floss.
But then I found out that there are such things as "converters," programs that convert your photos or art into stitching charts. Swoon. I felt almost giddy, with every bit of that rush my twelve year-old self had once experienced at the thought of "painting" with thread.
So I set about finding an open source version of such a program. I literally spent hours chasing dead links and even deader leads. I found what seemed like a million programs that came with embroidery machines. Meh. If I could afford an embroidery machine, would I be looking for open source? (Maybe yes, actually; in my opinion open source is well worth supporting regardless of one's personal finances. Of course it appears that many embroidery machines do come with such a program, so I suppose I wouldn't need an open source version. But I digress.)
I also found several programs that were supposed to be *FREE* (can you picture the flashing lights and confetti?), but just turned out to be free trials that would eventually segue into hundreds of dollars spent on a licensed copy. Thanks, but maybe some other time.
Just when I was about to give it up, I came across PictureCraftwork.com. It's not the prettiest, flashiest site, nor is it completely free. As far as user-friendliness goes, it's available in four languages and you can adjust everything except canvas size.
Personally I think the ability to change canvas size is pretty important, so perhaps it will be added in the future. But overall, if you're looking for an easy and affordable way to convert your pics into basic charts for 10" square canvases, it's not too shabby.
Charts under 1001 stitches are free, anything over that is a flat fee. Each pixel counts as a stitch (eep) so you can expect to pay 5.00 Euro or 7.00 USD unless you're working with a very small, simple design.
Check it out and let me know what you think. Blogger appears to be having issues with image uploading today, so I'll be back later to try again.
*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment