The Textile Challenge

[Ross Macintosh]

Egg - Note that I haven't posted any images.

Regards, Ross "Macho-Man" Macintosh

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[jassony]

Wow Egg, Purple and Green! It really makes my eyes jump.

I don't understand how you used clip view on it, please explain.

Judi

[Egg Bramhill]

Let's try and explain how I created the cross stiching.
1: Created 2 torpedo shapes to form a x shape and grouped them. Set the dimensions to 20 x 20 pixels.
2: Created a brush with this shape. Set scaling to none. Noted line size.
3: Set Grid to 20 pixels spacing to 2. Set snap to grid.
4: Created a line and set the line width to that of the brush noted earlier. Aplied the cross stitch brush.
5: Cloned and moved it vertically.
6: Blended the 2 lines and adjust blend to ensure a matrix of 20 x 20 pixel fill. This gives the shocking purple background. Convert to edible shapes.
7: I now had a rectangle of regularly spaced cross stitches.
8: Copied this backgound. Made a new layer and Cntrl-Shift-V. Set line colour to green. This altered the matrix stitches to green.
9: Set a new layer and put it to back. Reset grid to 20 x 20 pixels and spacing 1. Drew the birds body with lines 20 pixel units to ensure cross stitches weren't intersected. Copied to clipboard.
10: Cntrl-shift-V onto green matrix layer. Send to back. Select all and apply clip view. This gave the birds body.
11: By repeating the above process of copying the matrix, changing the line colour (which alters the matrix fill colour), drawing the clipping and moving it to that layer and applying anothe clip view I built up the embrodery.
Hope this helps.
Egg

[Egg Bramhill]

n.b. the beak is yellow but I uploaded the file as a 16 colour gif and it's come across as green.
NOTE to Macho Man Ross...I've bought up two daughters so I know all about cross stitching ;-}

[This message was edited by Egg Bramhill on May 05, 2001 at 06:56 PM.]

[jassony]

Sounds like an interesting approach, I'll have to play around with it.
Thanks

[Ross Macintosh]

Question for the Eggman:

Some time ago a friend was interested in developing custom cross stich patterns from photos. I figure you're the right one to advise if xara can be used to simulate complicated photo-based cross stitch designs. I'm thinking the photo could be put through a filter to posterize it or otherwise reduce the numbers of colours. Then pre-made (xara of course) transparency "bump maps" could be overlayed to give the photo the cross stitch look. I'm thinking the same kind of thing as your famous drawing of King Alfred with the pair of transparent overlays. Might this approach work?

Oh, and your cross stiches are very neat and consistant. Keep up the good work. Maybe you can graduate to embroidery some day soon.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Egg Bramhill]

That sounds like an interesting idea. I suppose your approach would be correct in that the number of colours would need to be reduced to a managable number and then image posterized to the required pixel grid. The problem would still exist that all the colours would by default be local colours in XaraX. I was hoping to write a short program in Visual Basic such that you could import a .xar file, have the basic program rename all the colours into named colours and when reimported into XaraX maintain those named colours. You could then select all the same named colours in the name gallery, group them or add them, such that it would generate a single shape to act as a clipping image. Unfortunately my "learn visual basic in 21 days" has had to go on the back boiler due to pressure of work, but it would be a handy little utility. Maybe one of our forum members with more programming savy than me could take this on. I know it would work as I've physically changed the text file and re-imported it and the named colours are re-imported. (I came across the idea after someone posted a request wanting to select all the same colours from a Xara tracing.)
Anyone out there intrested in developing this plug-in?
Egg

[wfcentral]

I made this in 15 minutes after reading the thread. I know it is not an answer to the problem they were listing... It doesn't create cross-stitch patterns from Xara or list colors or anything, but if you were considering making a photo into a cross-stitch it might help you visualize how it might look. I cheated and put the Xara photo in PaintShop Pro so I could mosaic half the image - I'm assuming that there may be plug-in's for Xara that would do this effect... Anyway, created a beveled X, converted to bmp, applied it as a pattern into a square that I then added brightness transparency to. Then I adjusted the tiling pattern to match the mosaic size... does any of this make sense?

[stlewis]

I have seen a little shareware utility in the past for what you want; you point it at a picture, select the number of thread colours you want and it does the rest. No idea what is was called.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[wfcentral]

Yes, I downloaded the photo-to-cross-Stitch program a long time ago. I thought everyone was just trying to come up with ways to cross-Stitch a photo in Xara.

If you want a program that converts photos to cross-Stitch complete with thread colors check out...www.download.com and do a search for "cross stitch" there are 10 programs to choose from.

Robert