Cross-stitchify v2.1

March 20, 2009 - 15:30 — w_nightshade

Someone on an email list I belong to asked about ways of making a counted cross-stitch pattern from a photo. There are commercial packages that do this, but it seemed like something GIMP could do, and I wanted some Python practice.

Attached is a zip file containing the following files:

cross-stitch.py - Python script for converting a photo to a cross-stitch pattern
floss.html - an HTML document listing available cross-stitch floss colours by numbered index, common name, RGB and hex values (culled from http://www.stitchstuff.com/dmcrgb.htm)

I used the Photoshop tutorial found here as my starting point. The script performs the following operations:

Pixellates, adjusts brightness & posterises according to user settings
Scales down the pixellated image to increase performance
Checks each colour of each mosaic tile, and performs "best matching" colour exchange against the palette of available floss colours
Scales up pixellated image for next operations and for readability
vAdds grid in new layer
Adds text labels for each colour with floss' index number
Creates a text file listing all floss needed, and in what quantities

It appears in the menus under Filters > Decor > Cross-stitchify... It takes quite some time to run as I need to iterate through each tile of the image twice, and any interruption during the label phase can crash the script, but the output is quite good. The entire image can be printed for use as the pattern, or just the grid if printing in B&W.

UPDATE: version 2.0 - added creation of text file with list of what colour floss, and how many stitches of each, are used. Also allowed for greater range of mosaic sizes to accommodate wider range of images.
UPDATE: version 2.1 - added OS check: win32 opens text file, other OS displays message with path to file.

Attachment	Size
cross-stitchify_v2_1.zip	15.03 KB

Comments

February 17, 2010 - 15:41 — w_nightshade

Long Time

Wow, it's been a while since I looked at this. can't promise I will be making any changes to this any time soon, but I like the ideas you present here.

October 19, 2009 - 11:46 — dave collin

symbol instead of number

My wife loves this - no other cross stitch app. for ubuntu gnome (there is a KDE app - kxstitch - but many problems compiling on gnome, so:
How about changing the floss colour number to show a symbol, anything from standard fonts would do - letters, etc., with a listing of symbol to floss number. This would be more like regular cross stitch applications and allow easier reading of final chart, and maybe allow smaller mosaic size without losing readability.
Also, one of the older posts here - being able to limit the palette size would make this really useable - haven't seen any further work on this - is it a possibility? I would love to but know absolutlely nothing about computers except as a "normal"user.
Thanks

April 4, 2009 - 05:55 — Anonymous

Where to load?

I downloaded Python and the script. What folder should the cross-stitch.py and the floss.html files be loaded into so that I see Filters > Decor > Cross-stitchify ?

April 24, 2009 - 16:21 — w_nightshade

Also: floss.html = red herring

You don't need to add floss.html anywhere specific, it is supplied as a key to the numbered indicators in the final pattern. It does not actually interact with the script, it is only for reference..

April 24, 2009 - 16:15 — w_nightshade

Some Helpful Info

Here is a good quick guide to installing Python plugins: http://meetthegimp.org/how-to-install-python-plugins-under-gimp/

April 3, 2009 - 05:55 — Anonymous

How to use?

Hi, I have been playing with your plugin, and it is not clear to me exactly what the 3 parameters do. What does the mosaic setting do? What about brightness? I understand that the posterize sets the number of posterization levels. That seems a bit non-intuitive to me. I would rather specify the number of colors I want to use directly. I guess something like converting to indexed colors with a specific number of colors in the palette? I might try to learn some python so I can mess with that myself.

April 24, 2009 - 16:18 — w_nightshade

Interesting Idea

The Mosaic parameter sets the size of the "pixels" in the final pattern (if you want each stitch represented by a 20x20 pixel square, set it to "20"). The default value (10) is the smallest I can make the squares to fit the text without making them unreadable. As for setting the number of colours, I never thought of doing that. I wrote it assuming you wanted to get the closest to the look of the original image using any available floss colour. The Posterize setting might help with that, but it doesn't give you a 1 to 1 correlation with number of colours. I encourage you to get Python and fiddle with the script! It is really fun, and you can learn a lot.

March 25, 2009 - 06:09 — Anonymous

Another error?

Just when the plugin is about to complete, I get this error: AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'startfile' The details are: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/python/gimpfu.py", line 692, in response dialog.res = run_script(params) File "/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/python/gimpfu.py", line 353, in run_script return apply(function, params) File "/home/bob/.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/cross-stitch.py", line 567, in cross_stitch os.startfile(file.name) AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'startfile'

March 25, 2009 - 06:36 — Anonymous

Kind of answered my own question

After a little googling I figured out that os.startfile is just supposed to open the file up. Since that is just opening the text file that contains the listing, I just commented out that line for myself and it works quite well now. If it helps your debugging, I'm running this under Fedora 10.

March 25, 2009 - 14:00 — w_nightshade

Updated

Try the new version.

March 25, 2009 - 13:30 — w_nightshade

Thanks for the follow-up

I wrote thus under Windows, and I don't have a linux installation to test. My research (i.e. 30 seconds of Googling) reveal that to launch a file "with its appropriate application" is not a trivial thing to do in Linux. I suspect your solution is best. I think I might check the OS, and if it is not Win32 I will put a GIMP message box that states the location of the text file. Cheers!

March 23, 2009 - 14:27 — Anonymous

What version of the gimp did

What version of the gimp did you write this for? I'm running gimp 2.4.7 and python 2.5.1. I keep getting an error message Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/python/gimpfu.py", line 662, in response dialog.res = run_script(params) File "/usr/lib/gimp/2.0/python/gimpfu.py", line 347, in run_script return apply(function, params) File "/home/robin/.gimp-2.4/plug-ins/cross-stitch.py", line 448, in cross_stitch theImage.resize(wNew, hNew, 0, 0) error: could not resize image (ID 1) to 0x0, offset 0, 0 Any idea what is happening? Thanks, rhaben

March 24, 2009 - 17:35 — w_nightshade

Hmmm...

I wrote this using the most recent version of GIMP (2.6x). The error looks like it is trying to resize the image to nothing... I am wondering if the image is unusual in some way... I posted a new version of the script. Try that, and tell me if you get the same result. If so, maybe you can post the image and I can test here.

May 16, 2009 - 21:25 — Anonymous

Image size issue debugged

If you set theMosaic to something > 5, then the newHeight and Width are calculated to be 0.


       #resize layer shrinking mosaic=5 to run faster
        #mosaicModified = 5 / theMosaic
        
        #my fix
        mosaicModified = float(5) / (float(theMosaic))
        print "Mod Mosaic = %d" % mosaicModified
        widthNew = widthOld * mosaicModified
        heightNew = heightOld * mosaicModified

I have been running with the cast operators just fine.

March 22, 2009 - 13:13 — Anonymous

Possible enhance

Would it be possible to have in another layer a list with all the colors used and the number of stitches of each color, in order to have a buying list. Now you have to "eye-scan" the output looking for X (15 by default) different colors. Thank you, great job.

March 23, 2009 - 10:29 — w_nightshade

Excellent idea

I was thinking about how I could enhance the script, and that sounds ideal! I will have a think, and post the new version here when I have worked out the best method.

July 22, 2009 - 13:50 — Anonymous

Home palette

Is there a way for me set the palette according to the threads I have in my basket? I might have 40 threads and want to create patterns without needing to buy more. Best of all would be if the tool let me choose how many threads I'm willing to buy (default 0) in addition to the ones I have. It would then list separately the ones you have to buy.

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