Cross-Stitch - Make Your Own Patterns with Free Paint.NET

You can create your own original cross-stitch pattern and save money too. Paint.NET and many of its plug-ins are absolutely free. It is easy to use and you can take your own photo or a downloaded image and tinker with it to make an original work of art. The neat thing about Paint.NET - ITS FREE. Just invest a little time and play with all the effects and adjustments. If you can't make a particular effect, search the forum and you may find a plugin that will do the job.

You will need a zip program to unzip the plugin download, but again you can download one free. Just do a search. I believe that CNET has a few free zip programs.

First Step:

• You need to download and install FREE Paint.NET software.
• Visit CNET DOWNLOADS to download and install the software.

CLOSE THE PAINT.NET PROGRAM before proceeding

Next Step - You will require a plugin called checkboard. Visit the Paint.net forum at http://paintdotnet.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=28791

• Download the the zipped checkboard plugin.
• Unzip the checkboard file. Copy and paste the .dll file into Effects folder located - Computer/Programs/Paint.Net/Effects

Photo or Image Selection:

Open Paint.Net. Click File and Open to Select your photograph or image. You can use your own photos, scanned images or download images from the internet.

• Two excellent sources of free images for non-commercial purposes are http://www.sxc.hu/ or http://www.ixquick.com/
• The image should be no smaller than 640 px. by 480 px. for the best results.

Resize or Crop Your Image:

• Resize the photo or image by clicking image then Resize. Enlargement of an image is not recommended.
• Select the portion of the image you wish to use for your pattern by using the rectangle, elipse or lasso tools. Click Image, then Crop to Selection.

REMEMBER YOU CAN UNDO ANY ACTION BY CLICKING THE BACK ARROW BUTTON

NOW BEGIN MAKING YOUR VERY OWN CROSS-STITCH PATTERN

Pixelate and Posterize Your Image:

• Click Effect, Click Distort, click Pixelate then change cell size to five and Click OK.
• Click Adjustments, play with Brght/Contrast settings until you are satisfied with colors. You can also do this at any time.
• Click Adjustment, then Posterize. Change level to 5 - 20, just pick the lowest number that looks good. 20 is the best, but you will need more colors.

Add New Layer:

• Click on the symbol with the plus sign at the bottom of the layer box. A checkerboard layer will pop up in the in the layer box.
• Double Click on that and a layer properties box will pop up. Set the opacity to 100 to 130 to start. This adjustment will determine how well you are able to see the lines in your finished pattern, so you may have to adjust it.
• Un-tick your image layer and the new checker board layer will be displayed in the main window.
• Click Effects, Render, Checkboard and set the size to 5 which is the same as your pixelate setting.

Merge Layers:

• Tick both the background image and the checkerboard image in the image box
• Click the Merge Layer Down symbol at the bottom of the image box and your image and the checkboard image will be combined.

The Final Cross Stitch Pattern

If you are happy with your pattern, save and print. If not, click the back arrow and go back and change the opacity setting in the layer properties box. You may also need to adjust the Brightness/Contrast in the Adjustments menu.

If necessary you can press the back button until you can completely start over. I did that several times. I think that elipse tool may have been a better option for selecting the area of the image I wanted rather than the rectangle I used. The possibilities are endless, and when you finish a project it will truly be an original.

I know that this may seem a little fussy to do, but once you have done one or two times, it becomes easier. I read a blog demonstrating how to make cross stitch patterns using your own images, but it required photoshop which is very costly. So I decided to play around with Paint.NET to see if I could do the same with free software. It took me about four hours to find the checkboard plugin and work with a couple of images until I got it right.

I started using Paint.NET when I bought a new computer loaded with Vista and I wasn't about to replace my old programs for working with photos and wordprocessing at a cost of over $1,000.  I use Paint.NET now exclusively to edit headers and pictures for online marketing. Openoffice.org and Paint.NET are very reliable programs that available free to use for crafts or business. 

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