Photo Stitch

Drop a photo, get a stitchable embroidery design. StitchKit handles the hard parts: color quantization, edge detection, fill direction, density per region.

Workflow

File → New from Photo… opens the Photo Stitch Wizard:

1. Pick the image — JPG, PNG, HEIC. Higher resolution = more detail, but the wizard downsamples to working size.
2. Choose the fabric color — affects which photo regions get skipped. Light areas on white fabric won't be stitched; on dark fabric, dark areas drop.
3. Color count — 6 / 12 / 24 thread colors. More colors = more detail + more changes on the machine.
4. Stitch direction — auto (follows image gradients) or single-angle.
5. Hoop size — final design fits the hoop you select.

The wizard previews each step before committing.

Fabric color awareness

When you set the fabric color in step 1, the wizard buckets every photo color against the fabric using ΔE2000 perceptual distance. Regions where the photo color is too close to the fabric are dropped — saves thread, no visible stitches on matching ground.

Adjust the threshold from the Advanced panel in step 1 if you want more or fewer regions dropped.

After the wizard

The generated design opens as a regular embroidery file. You can edit individual color blocks, re-order them, or apply density adjustments. Re-run Photo Stitch on the original image any time with File → Re-run Photo Stitch… to try different settings.

Tips

• Faces and portraits work best with 12+ colors. 6 colors is for graphic / poster-style images.
• Photos with shallow depth of field stitch cleaner than busy scenes — the background usually buckets as one region.
• For best results on dark garments, increase color count by 2-4 over the equivalent light-garment setting.