[Hall of tricks]
[Part 2]

Part 1

Everyone has seen cross-stitch work done by their mother or other talented (and patient) person. My grand-mother had many beautiful ones hanging on her wall. It used to take weeks to make one by hand. This tutorial will show you how to turn any image in an elegant cross-stitch in less that 10 minutes. The following is the result that we will achieve.

Note: I did this in PI 5.0 but it can also be done using 4.2 except for the frame. 

Open your image in PhotoImpact. If you can't find one quickly, the PhotoImpact Albums contain hundreds of interesting ones (on the CD). The one I used here is in the Landmarks album, image 86. In case you're not familiar with importing an image from an album in PI, here are the steps:

• Insert the PhotoImpact 5.0 CD.
• Look at the very top right of PI's screen, you'll see a Switch command. Click it and choose PhotoImpact Album.
• On the left are all the albums, find the Landmarks album.  If you can't find it, choose File/Open, in the Look In drop-down list select the CD. On the CD, double-click the Samples\Albums folders. Select Landmarks.ab3 then click Open.
• Find an image you like or choose the one I used.
• If you upgraded to PI 5.0, right-click on the image and select Open. The image will open in PI. If you still use PI 4.2, find an image of your choice, right-click and choose Copy/Thumbnail then paste it in PI. 

If you want to use the whole image that fine, I cropped mine to about 425 wide by 265 high. To crop the image follow these simple steps:

• Click the Standard Selection Tool, click and drag in you image to select the portion you want to keep.
• In the toolbar, click the Crop button.

Before we cross-stitch our image, let's reduce the number of color used. This will make the cross-stitch much more realistic.

• From the Format menu choose Level.
• From the nine thumbnails shown, choose the third one and click OK.
• Reducing the number of colors in the image will result in about 40 to 50 color used in the cross-stitch. If you don't then hundreds of colors will be used. Everybody will agree that a cross-stitch normally uses even less than 50 colors.

Ok, we got our image. Let's start stitching! The next steps are the heart of this tutorial.

• From the Effect menu choose Creative/Painting..
• In the Paint Template find the number 40.
• In the Fine Control section, set the following sliders:
• Fineness: 65, Opacity: 0, Density: 451, Angle: 40 and Variation: 0
• Preview the effect by clicking Preview. If you like it click Continue and click Add.
• When the Add To EasyPalette appears, type a name in the appears, type a name in the Sample Name textbox (maybe cross-stitch01), take note of the Gallery and Group and click OK. Now you'll be able to re-apply this effect to any images simply by double-clicking the thumbnail in the EasyPalette.
• Click OK.

Can you believe it? We're done. The only things left is small adjustments and the frame.

• From the Format menu choose Tone Map.
• Set both Highlight and Midtone to 12 and click OK.
• The Tone Map command is a great tool to add emphasis, remove shadow, improve contrast and enrich images. Whenever your image is too dark or lacks contrast (like when you scan an image), you should give Tone Map a try.

If you want there's a couple more effects from the Effect menu you could use. I suggest you use only one of the following possible effects, but then again, you should do what YOU think looks nice.

• You could slightly blur the image with the Effect/Blur & Sharpen/Average command (use the first thumbnail).
• Or use the Effect/Blur & Sharpen/Sharpen command (use the first thumbnail).
• Finally, the Effect/Blur & Sharpen/Unsharp Mask command (use the first thumbnail) might also improve your cross-stitch.

Now that we're done with the cross-stitch let's make it an object (separated from the black area around).

• Zoom very close on the upper-left corner of the cross-stitch.
• Click the Standard Selection Tool. Click on the upper-left pixel of the cross-stitch and drag off the right edge of the screen. The image will start scrolling right. Continue until you see the upper-right edge of the cross-stitch the scroll down (don't release the mouse yet!). When you see the bottom-right corner of the cross-stitch, locate the mouse on the bottom-right pixel then release the mouse.
• Right-click inside the cross-stitch and choose Convert To Object..

Don't forget to save your work (save it as a .UFO file). In part 2 of this tutorial, we'll add the frame. We could use the Frame Designer for this, but why not design our own, right?