Mimimetr

Turn your photo into a diamond painting chart, free

A shop kit comes with its subject already chosen. Here it’s your call: a starry nebula, the view from last summer’s trip, the cat in a crown! Upload your picture and make a chart worth sparkling over.

Choose a photo

Everything runs in your browser. The photo stays on your computer or phone.

Drills carry the same numbers as DMC threads, so a drill seller will understand your chart right away. Pick square 2.5 mm or round 2.8 mm drills, and the finished size works itself out.

Auto starts you at 300 drills wide and 80 colours. That’s a big one, about 75 cm across with 2.5 mm drills, so for a 30 × 40 cm canvas set the width to 120, which gives roughly 120 × 160. Under the crop you get the same verdict as in cross-stitch: Great fit, Fine or Expect grain. Calm background can even out a blurry backdrop to one tone, and you can switch it off. Colours go from 5 to 100. There’s no Portrait mode here, because one drill can’t be two colours: Auto works in solid colours with soft dithering, and the rest is in the manual settings.

You get a preview, a legend with symbols and codes, and drill and bag counts for each colour, with a 10% margin and about 200 drills to a bag.

The PDF prints on A4 with the grid, symbols and a sheet map, so you can work sector by sector, and the bag list is ready for shopping.

The honest bit: diamond painting has no blended colours, so soft portrait shading comes out rougher than in cross-stitch and grain shows up more often. A clean background and a big main subject work best. At the default size our 14 test photos took 339–792 bags, so shrink the width before you shop. Bag size and margin are our assumptions; your seller may pack differently. Calm background removes bokeh and sky gradients along with the grain. Nobody has laid these charts in drills yet. We don’t sell canvas, drills or glue, just the chart.

or drop it here JPG, PNG or WEBP Best results: a sharp subject on a calm or plain background, a high-contrast photo from 600 px, without extremely vivid colours.

Settings

What to make
A blurred or plain background becomes one even colour with no grain. The subject is processed as usual.
Manual settings (image type, confetti, dithering)
Image type
Drawing: each cell takes its dominant colour, thin lines and single dots are kept, and white and the dark outline are guaranteed a place in the palette. For flat fills, folk art, logos. Auto uses our best settings: 300 wide (250 for a cross-stitch drawing) and 80 colours. Want another size, fewer threads or your own background? Change them by hand. Easier to stitch: lone stitches and areas of 1–2 cells take the colour of their neighbours, very rare colours are merged.
Smoother skies and skin, but the chart gets “noisier” and harder to stitch. Off by default.

How it works

  1. 1 Choose a photo (JPG, PNG or WEBP). Crop it to a square if you like. A verdict appears under the crop right away: great fit, fine, or expect grain.

  2. 2 The chart appears by itself: Auto picks the image type, the width (usually 300) and 80 colours, and decides whether to even out the background. Want another size, fabric or fewer threads? Change them by hand and the chart recalculates.

  3. 3 Check the preview and the thread list, then download the PDF. Selling the chart? Mark a copy for each buyer right here.

Common questions

How big will the finished piece be?

Size = stitches ÷ fabric count × 2.54 cm. 300 stitches, the Auto default, come to about 54 cm on Aida 14 and about 42 cm on Aida 18. 100 stitches are 18 and 14 cm. Add 5–8 cm of fabric on each side for framing.

Which threads does the chart use?

DMC six-strand floss, from a table of 489 colours. Every colour of the photo is matched to the closest thread. Thread codes and names are facts; screen colours are approximate.

Why does the chart look blocky?

A cross stitch is a square: the fewer the stitches, the rougher the picture. That’s why Auto uses 300 stitches and 80 colours. Making the chart smaller by hand? Fine facial features simplify first, so check the preview before you download the PDF.

What does Auto do, and what can I change by hand?

Auto looks at the picture: flat graphics go to Drawing at 250 stitches, everything else to Portrait at 300, with 80 colours. It also decides whether to use the calm background and shows a verdict under the crop. Diamond painting has no Portrait mode: only solid colours, 300 drills wide. Width, colours, fabric and background are right there to change; image type, confetti and dithering live in the manual settings.

Common questions · All articles