The effect turns your image into a cross-stitch picture. 25 colors are chosen for the threads and the image is contructed from crosses using these 25 colors. You can choose the thickness of the thread. As usual push F8 to experiment with the settings automatically, and double click on the image to set the settings manually. You can choose:
| 1) | The number of cross stitches horizontally (the number of vertical ones will be worked out automatically) |
| 2) | The colors to use (double click on the color) |
| 3) | Whether the background is a solid color, a graded color or the original background image itself. |
Hints:
You can brighten the resulting image in two ways:
| 1) | Clear the "Wizard chooses" check box and double click on the darker colors in the selection. Replace the darker colors with brighter colors. |
| 2) | Choose a brighter background color |
You can get a "tapestry" effect by using a large thread width and or setting a high number for the number of cross-stitches.
You may get what look like horizontal or vertical lines in the final image. You can usually get rid of these by changing the number of crosses horizontally slightly, for example from 120 to 121.
If the width of the stitches is large then you may not be able to see the background.
Image quality dialog can have a big effect on this image, so it is worth setting it to High if your image is not large.
See also the Warp Print Effect.