Importing: Sizing

Overview:
Sizing is the most important issue to understand when you create patterns from pictures. Understanding this topic will go a long way in helping you get the most from your imports. The most important point to understand is that the more stitches you have in your design (larger design), the cleaner your import will look. For example: Lets say we create a pattern from an image that is 500 x 500 pixels. If our pattern is only 50 x 50 stitches, the pattern will lose much of the detail of the original image, where as if your pattern is 250 x 250 stitches it will be much closer. If you want to stitch the image exactly, you would need a pattern that is 500 x 500 stitches. PCStitch Pro will do its best to resize the image to match the pattern size you wish to stitch, but understand that the smaller the pattern, the less detail there will be in the pattern.
Our example image is 268 pixels wide by 253 pixels high. When importing, it is important to get the size of your pattern in stitches as close as possible to the size of your picture in pixels. Change the width of the pattern to 100. You will see that the height automatically changes to 94. This is because the Keep Aspect Ratio box is checked. If you uncheck this box, you can change the height manually, but you will either “squish” or “stretch” the pattern, and it probably won’t come out the way you want it. Check the Show Preview box under the Pattern Preview window. The preview window will then show you a pretty good representation of what the finished pattern will look like. Change the width of the pattern to 50. You will see that the preview image shrinks and gets very blurry. That is because 50 stitches just isn’t enough to get a good representation of an image that is 260 pixels wide. Change the width back to 100. This is a pretty good compromise between pattern quality and size for the example image.
Note: The importing tutorial is broken down into 5 different steps. Click Here to view the next import topic: Image Adjustments
See Also:
| Importing Overview
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