Turn a photo into a real, printable cross stitch chart: a multi page symbol PDF, a colour preview, and a floss shopping list with actual DMC thread numbers. Free, and your photo is processed in your browser, never uploaded.
Simple photos with clear shapes and good light stitch best. Busy backgrounds turn into confetti.
DMC is a trademark of its owner and this tool is not affiliated with it. The thread numbers are matched using approximate community colour conversions, so always check a real floss card before you buy.
Tap any thread in the list to see only that colour in the preview. Tap it again to show everything.
One ZIP with four files. A multi page PDF chart where every stitch is a printed symbol on a 10 by 10 grid, with row and column rulers down the margins, centre markers, and an overlap column on every join so the pages line up. A colour preview PNG so you can see the finished piece before you buy thread. A CSV floss list with the DMC number, the colour name, the exact stitch count and a skein estimate for each thread. And a short text file explaining how to read the chart if this is your first one.
Your photo is shrunk to the stitch count you asked for, so one pixel becomes one stitch. Every stitch is then matched to its closest thread out of 455 DMC shades using CIEDE2000 in Lab colour space, which is a perceptual match rather than a raw red, green and blue match. That is the difference between skin that looks like skin and skin that goes grey or green.
Then the palette is squeezed down to the number of threads you asked for by repeatedly merging the two closest real thread numbers, weighted by how much of the picture each one covers. That order matters. Tools that pick average colours first and match them to DMC afterwards can land two averages on the same thread number, so you ask for 24 colours and quietly get 19. Here the merge itself lands on exactly the number of real, buyable thread numbers you asked for. If the finished chart still comes out with fewer, either the photo had fewer distinct shades than that or the stray stitch cleanup absorbed a thread that only ever appeared as single stitches, and the page tells you which of the two it was.
Stitch count and fabric count together decide the finished size. 100 stitches on 14 count Aida is about 7.1 inches. The same 100 stitches on 18 count is about 5.6 inches. More stitches means more detail and more hours, so start smaller than you think: a 100 by 130 piece is already 13,000 stitches. Buy fabric with at least three spare inches on every side for the hoop and the framing.
Fewer colours almost always looks better than more. Twenty to thirty threads is plenty for a portrait and far more pleasant to work than sixty. Crop tight on your subject before you upload, because background clutter becomes single stray stitches that add hours and add nothing. Leave the stray stitch cleanup ticked, push contrast up a little for photos taken indoors, and if a face looks flat, drop the colour strength slightly so the shading carries the shape instead of the hue.
Skein numbers are estimates, not a guarantee. Coverage changes with fabric count, strand count, how tightly you stitch and how much thread you waste on the back, so round up and buy a spare of anything you need more than two of. The DMC colour values used here are community approximations rather than official data, so a thread can look a shade off against the real card. This tool makes full cross stitches only: no backstitch outlines, no fractional stitches, no French knots. And it caps the pattern at 40,000 stitches, because past that the PDF gets slow to make and unpleasant to print.