Mimimetr

Turn your photo into a cross-stitch chart, free

A gap-toothed grin, the cat who owns the sofa, grandma’s wedding photo, an old folk pattern: picture them in crosses! Upload an image and get a chart in under half a minute: symbol grid, DMC legend, skein counts and a PDF to print. Go on, dig out the hoop. Your next “one more row, then bed” has just arrived.

Choose a photo

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

You stitch, and you want your own subject, not whatever the kit company picked. Mimimetr turns almost any picture into a chart: people, pets, drawings, folk patterns. It all happens in your browser, and your file never leaves your device.

Auto does the thinking first. It looks at your picture and sends flat graphics with clean outlines to Drawing, which protects dots and lines. Everything else goes to Portrait, with blended threads and soft transitions like the big-brand kits. Rather choose yourself? Drawing, Portrait and plain Photo are all waiting in the manual settings.

You start at 300 stitches wide (250 for Drawing) and 80 colours. The moment a photo loads, a verdict appears under the crop: Great fit, Fine or Expect grain, with the reason. If the background is blurred or plain, Auto turns on Calm background, which evens it out to one tone with no grain. All of it is yours to overrule: 40 to 300 stitches wide (Photo and Drawing stop at 250), 5 to 100 colours, Aida 14, 16 or 18, background on or off. The chart recalculates on its own.

You get a preview of the stitched piece, a legend with DMC codes, stitch and skein counts for each colour, and a shopping list when blends are involved. The PDF prints on A4 in colour and black and white, with overlapping sheets, a sheet map and big, readable symbols. It’s built for Pattern Keeper to read, though we’ve only tested that on a simulation, not in the app itself.

The honest bit: 300 stitches on Aida 14 is about 54 cm wide, and our 14 test photos took 43–120 whole skeins at that size. For a smaller project, bring the width down and expect fine details to simplify. Very dark or blurry photos make weaker charts than a sharp one taken in daylight. Calm background swaps the backdrop for one flat tone, so bokeh and sky gradients go, and fluffy edges can turn out rough; that’s what the switch is for. Very vivid colours come out paler, because no thread matches them. Nobody has stitched these charts yet, and screen colours are approximate. Apart from the background, the tool invents nothing: it just translates your picture into crosses.

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.

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