From a photograph to DMC threads, the whole route: what a cross-stitch chart actually is, which settings to choose, and what to buy. About a minute of work and a few evenings of stitching.
A cross-stitch chart is a grid where every square tells you which colour of thread to put there. Turning a photograph into one means two decisions, how big and how many colours, and then reading the answer. This page walks through both, and through the settings worth touching once you have.
A cross stitch is a small X sewn inside one square of the fabric. A chart is the plan for them: a grid where each square carries a colour and a symbol, and you stitch square by square. Nothing else holds the design: it lives entirely in the counting.
So converting a photograph means two reductions. First the picture comes down to that grid, which is brutal: 60 squares across is 60 pixels of information. Then every colour that survives is replaced by the nearest real DMC thread, a numbered reference you can buy in a shop. That second step is what English-speaking stitchers call image to DMC cross stitch, and it is the part that makes the result stitchable rather than merely pixelated.
It is not a pixel-art filter, and the difference matters when you are holding a needle. A filter is free to invent any colour it likes; here every colour has to exist as a skein, carry a number, and be findable in a haberdashery. That constraint is the whole craft, and it is why two charts of the same photograph with different thread counts look like different pictures.
The converter does both reductions for you and hands back a printable chart: the grid, the counting rules every ten squares, and the list of DMC references with the number of stitches each one takes, which doubles as the shopping list.
A chart is a very low-resolution picture: 60 stitches across is 60 pixels of information. What survives that is a clear subject, good contrast, and not much background: a pet against a wall, a flower, a single object. What does not survive is a busy scene, a distant face, or fine texture. If you have a choice, take the one where the subject fills the frame.
This decides the detail and the finished size at once. 40 stitches is a small motif, 60 to 90 is the usual range for something recognisable, and past 150 you are committing to months. Divide by your fabric's count for the size: 80 stitches on 14-count aida is about 14.5 cm across.
Eight to fifteen suits most photographs. Fewer is bolder, faster and often prettier; more keeps detail at the cost of a thread change every few stitches. The counter tells you how many stitches each colour takes, which is the honest measure of how much work you have signed up for.
Turn the picture if it came off a phone sideways. Lift the vividness if the result looks washed out next to the photograph, because thread is more saturated than a screen. Remove the background if you want the subject on bare cloth. Every change redraws the grid straight away, so you can judge it rather than imagine it.
Tap a thread in the list to see exactly which stitches it covers, and use the wheel beside it to pick a different shade from the full DMC chart. This is worth doing for skin tones and for skies, where the nearest match by number is not always the one that looks right.
The PNG holds the grid, the counting rules and the thread list with a stitch count per colour. One skein of stranded cotton covers roughly 1,500 stitches at two strands on 14-count, so the counts tell you what to buy. Print it as large as your printer allows: you will be counting squares on it for a while.
Start in the middle and work outwards, so a miscount cannot push the design off the fabric. Two strands on 14-count aida is the usual choice. Cross every stitch the same way, top arm in the same direction throughout, and the finished surface catches the light evenly.
The gallery holds two lists. The charts are patterns made here, and any of them can be taken for free with its thread list. The finished pieces are photographs of real work, posted by the people who stitched it, from charts made here and from patterns found anywhere else. A chart somebody has already stitched carries a link to the pieces that came out of it: the same grid, on somebody else's fabric, in somebody else's frame. It is the most honest preview there is, and the best place to work out what a photograph becomes once it is in a hoop.
It costs nothing and takes about a minute to see whether your picture works.