More colors is not always better
Every extra color adds detail but also adds cost, sorting and chances for mistakes. In a small grid, many close shades blur together and make the picture look noisy. A smaller palette gives larger, calmer blocks of color, and the eye fills in the rest.
A useful rule is to start low and add colors only when something important disappears, such as an eye, a mouth or the edge of a shape.
Match the palette to what you own
If you already have a box of beads, a drawer of floss or a pile of yarn, limit the tool to those colors. The result may not match the photo exactly, but you can start today and you will not run out of a color you never bought.
If you are buying new supplies, check the materials list first. A pattern that needs 30 colors where 12 would do is a pattern that costs more and takes longer to sort.
- Beginners: try 6 to 12 colors.
- Portraits: 12 to 24 colors usually keep skin tones readable.
- Logos and cartoons: often 4 to 8 is enough.
What dithering does
Dithering mixes two nearby colors in a scattered pattern so that, from a distance, they look like a third color in between. Floyd–Steinberg is a common method: it spreads each cell’s rounding error onto the cells next to it. With a tiny palette it can make gradients, such as sky or skin, look smoother.
Up close, dithering produces many single cells of different colors next to each other.
When to turn dithering off
For crafts where you place each cell by hand, scattered single cells are slow and easy to get wrong. Turn dithering off for fuse beads, crochet tapestry and corner-to-corner patterns, where changing color every cell means constant yarn changes. Flat areas of color are quicker to make and look neat.
Dithering is worth trying for cross stitch or digital use, where small color changes cost little and the finished piece is viewed from a distance.
Merge near-duplicate colors
Two colors that look almost the same on screen often look identical in thread or beads. If your list has two light browns or two similar greens, merge them into one. You will sort less, buy less and make fewer mistakes, and the picture will rarely look different.
Have a correction or a suggestion? Tell the studio.