Ryijy Stitch Designer is a simple application for converting an image to rya rug or cross stitch pattern. Program provides tool for creating your own color palettes using images. This way you can create color palettes from your favorite threads or crayons or whatever colorful objects.
Main window contains an image window, which shows modified version of the image. Menu bar in the top of the application provides access to File, Zoom, Tools and Help menus. File menu contains options for opening, saving and printing image as well as closing the application. PNG-format is best suitable for saving the image for further processing. Zoom menu allows changing zoom level for the shown image. Tools menu contains custom color palette management tool. Help menu provides access to user manual, language selector and application homepage.
The tool window on the right has three tool tabs for converting the image to rya rug or cross stitch pattern. The first tab Image resizes and crops image. The Colors tab has tools to reduce colors in the image and the third tab allows manual changes to individual colors.
Changes in the earlier tabs (Image -> Colors -> Threads) reset selections in next tab pages. For example cropping the image resets all other settings. So it's best to first decide, what part of the image and how large the work will be. Then progress to color management tools.
Bottom right corner has buttons for opening new images, advancing to next tab page, opening printing dialog and closing the application.
To crop the image, use four edit boxes to enter percent values for how large portion of the image should be cropped away. Grey helper lines appear over the image when a value has been entered to edit box and next control is focused. When the crop area is ready press Crop to execute crop. Following crops will be done over the current cropped image. If you make a mistake, press Revert to go back to original image.
To resize the image, pick one of the predefined image sizes or enter values to edit boxes and press Resize. To lock aspect ratio, check checkbox between edit boxes. To resize back to original size, just select the original size from the drop down list. Resizing is always done to cropped image in original resolution so that it's easy to quickly try out different sizes without loss of image quality.
Colors tab has two methods to automatically reduce colors in the image: color palette selection and algorithmic color selection. Quick color selector has some preset values that can be used as starting point for color management. So it's good idea to first try with it.
Color palette selector picks the color palette that will be used in the image. Control has some options for reduced RGB palettes, where number of colors per each main color (red, green,blue) is limited. Normally good values for color images are 8 or 16 levels. Grey scale images should use 256 levels. DMC color option uses approximate values for DMC floss colors and is good for cross stitching. Custom color palettes are in the end of the list.
Under Color palette selector there are two sliders for changing color saturation and contrast. Changes in sliders take effect immediately. With large images this may be quite slow, so consider using Page Up or Page Down -buttons to change value in larger steps.
Color reduction slider sets target color count for algorithmic color reduction. The algorithmic processing slows down if image has lot of colors. Therefore color reduction is only available when color count does not exceed 4096 colors (16 colors/main color). The algorithm picks colors all around the image trying to cover as much of the used colors as possible. Large color areas are favored in color selection. Changes in slider position is trigger processing and update the image with new colors. If the image has thousands of colors, color reduction may take long time. Text box to the right of the slider provides an alternative method to input target value. New value in the text box is updated to image when control leaves the check box or Return-key is pressed. Pressing Escape-key reverts text box value back to previous value.
Threads tab allows changing individual colors in the image. Colors list shows what colors are currently used in the image and how many occurences each color has. Color list ordering can be changed using combobox on the top. If the color palette is very large, automatic color list update will be disabled. Showing the colors in the list may take several seconds and can be activated using *Update Thread Colors* button.
To change colors, first select them by clicking the color in the list or in the image. Multiple colors can be selected in the list and second click removes selection.
Draw button starts drawing mode, where selected color can be directly drawn to the image using mouse. Second click on the button ends drawing mode and resumes color picking mode.
Add button adds new color to the image.
Combine button merges checked colors using weighted averaging.
Replace button opens color dialog, where color can be freely selected. Selected colors will be included in the custom colors section. DMC colors have custom dialog with listbox for available colors.
Undo button undoes last color change (palette change or drawing) without limit.
Revert button reverts all manual color changes in this tab page.
Print-button in the lower right corner opens printing dialog. Printing dialog presents options for printing the image on right. Left side shows image preview.
Topmost printing option selects how symbols are printed over the image. Default setting does not print symbols. Options include printing only black and white symbols, printing symbols over light colors and printing small symbols over the color image.
Color Map setting selects if color map should be printed. Color map can be right or below the image or on a separate page.
If Show grid option is checked, then grid will be printed over the image. Grid options include printing black, white and black/white dotted lines. Grid will have thicker lines every 10 squares. Additionally there’s option for printing just the thick lines.
Zoom sets zoom level of preview pages.
Save button saves the image with color bar and/or grid to a file. To save the image for further processing, save it from main window using File->Save As -menu option.
Print button prints the image with color bar and/or grid.
Custom color palettes can be managed in palette manager window, which is accessible from Tools/Palette Manager....
Palette Manager window lists all custom color palettes from program's data folder. Actions in this window are instant and not undoable.
New... button creates new empty color palette and opens a dialog for selecting colors to the palette.
Edit... button opens palette editing dilalog for modifying selected color palette.
Rename button starts renaming selected color palette. ESC-button cancels the editing. Changing palette name also changes the name of the palette file in the disk and therefore new name must be a valid filename.
Import button loads color palette from file and stores it to program's data folder. This feature can be used to import version 1.2.5 palette files. 1.3.x version stored custom color palettes to data folder that is under users profile folder. (Except for standalone version, which still uses program's own folder.)
Colro palette editing window contains available colors on the left and edited target palette on the right. Arrow-buttons in the middle add or remove colors to/from edited palette. Available colors are split to two tab pages. OK button in the bottom accepts and saves the edited palette. Cancel button discards edited palette.
Name of the edited palette is in the text box on the right side of the window and allows renaming the palette. New name must be valid filename because palette name is used to construct filename for the custom palette. Color names and description on the edited palette color list can be edited. To ente redit mode, first select row by cliking with mouse and then click again in cell containg color name or description to be edited. Button in the end of the row opens color selection dilog for changing the color value. To remove colors from edited palette, select hem first and then click arrow pointing left.
First tab page in available colors allows picking colors from existing color palettes. Select source color palette from drop down list and then select new colors from the color list. To add selected colors to edited palette, click arror pointing right.
Other tab page allows creating new palettes from images. First load an image containing for example your own threads or paints using Browse button. After image is loaded, new colors can be added simply by clicking with mouse in the image. Size if the image can be changed using Zoom selector. Viewed image can be moved around using scrollbars in the edges.
During startup the program checks for additional custom palette files in the programs data folder. Installed version of the program use data folder in users profile folder (in Windows Vista C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\RyijyApp\RyijyStitchDesigner\1.3.2.) and standalone version uses startup folder. All files ending with "_palette.txt" are checked for valid palette definitions. If palette is loaded succesfully, it will be added to color palette list.
Palette file contains one color definition on each line. Each color definition consists of five tab-separated fields: Short name, Long name, Red, Green, Blue. Short name is short color code. Long name is natural language name for the color. Red, Green and Blue are values of each color component in range 0-255. Lines starting with #-character are comment lines.
Example of beginning of a custon palette file:
#Name Description Red Green Blue 898 Coffee Brown Vy Dk 73 42 19
This example goes through typical planning case.
1. Open an image using Open button.
2. Select subject from the image using crop controls and press Crop
3. Select new size for the image. This is used to lower resolution suitable to cross stitch or rya rug.
4. Select Balanced from Quick color selection.
5. Keep reducing colors using color palette control or using color reduction slider. Color reduction tries to pick selected number of colors as well as possible from the image.
6. Select similar colors by clicking the color list using mouse. Then push Combine to combine colors using weighted average.
7. If some colors don't fit to picture use Replace button to freely change them and use Undo to go back if new colors don't fit.
Finally click Print to open printing dialog, check grid and color map to get some visible aids. Hit Print button to continue with windows printer selection and printing options.
Copyright Jari Hautio 2008-2009.