Crafty: a tool I made for generating sprite patterns

[imjasonh]

Hi everyone, I'm new here so sorry if this isn't the best place to put this.

I used to do cross stitch when I was a kid, and made some Perler bead sprites about 6 or 7 years ago in college. I recently thought about getting back into the game. In preparation for that I wanted to make a tool that took sprite images and generated patterns for them, for cross stitch and Perler bead colors. I had so much fun making the tool I haven't had much time to actually craft anything, but I figured I'd share what I made in case someone else found it useful.

I call it Crafty and it's available here: http://www.imjasonh.com/projects/crafty

Let me know what you think or if you find bugs or have ideas about how I can make it better.

[tnitnetny]

Hi,

I just tried it out and each time I got an error message that something went wrong, so not sure what is wrong.

[imjasonh]

Hi,

I just tried it out and each time I got an error message that something went wrong, so not sure what is wrong.

Well that's no good! What image(s) were you trying it on? It works best on small images like sprites, and should warn you before processing huge images since it may lock up your browser window while it thinks.

[Kareesh]

Worked pretty good for me! I'm using Chrome for reference. One suggestion I would have is perhaps have symbols as well as the color blocks? Or at least an option for that. It can be hard to tell some of the colors apart.

[funkymonkey]

Very cool! Worked for me on Chrome on a Mac.

I would find it useful to have heavier lines on the grid every 10 rows; for bigger sprites it would be hard to count as-is.

[tnitnetny]

Well that's no good! What image(s) were you trying it on? It works best on small images like sprites, and should warn you before processing huge images since it may lock up your browser window while it thinks.

Ahhh, it was an image that was too complex probably. I see how it works now. Pretty neat. I like it a LOT better than a standard cross stitch generator. The advice I would give is to allow changes to the finished pattern. With my quilting patterns I like to change the existing sprites to simplify them and reduce the number of colors, or change some of the messy lines in complex sprites.

[imjasonh]

One suggestion I would have is perhaps have symbols as well as the color blocks? Or at least an option for that. It can be hard to tell some of the colors apart.

I added an option for black-and-white patterns that use letters instead of colors, and add a key at the bottom, to make printing a pattern easier. Does that help?

I would find it useful to have heavier lines on the grid every 10 rows; for bigger sprites it would be hard to count as-is.

Ooh, good idea, I'll work on that.

The advice I would give is to allow changes to the finished pattern. With my quilting patterns I like to change the existing sprites to simplify them and reduce the number of colors, or change some of the messy lines in complex sprites.

Yeah, I've thought about that too. I'd like to add it, but it might make the whole thing more complicated as a result. I'd effectively end up rewriting MS Paint in the browser, which sounds like fun, but also like a bit more work. I'll think about it and see if I can find a good way to do it.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, and keep it coming!

[Eliste]

I'm on Firefox on Yosemite on the Mac. I can't get it to work. When I tried uploading an image it wouldn't show a button to then do the conversion. Then when I tried using one of the images you already have it took me aaaagggeeessssssss to figure out how to get the pattern to show up. At first I kept clicking the image and it would just keep taking me to the image. Took forever for it to show the pattern. Its just not intuitive, and I still have no idea which DMC threads it is suggesting.

[imjasonh]

I'm on Firefox on Yosemite on the Mac. I can't get it to work. When I tried uploading an image it wouldn't show a button to then do the conversion. Then when I tried using one of the images you already have it took me aaaagggeeessssssss to figure out how to get the pattern to show up. At first I kept clicking the image and it would just keep taking me to the image. Took forever for it to show the pattern. Its just not intuitive, and I still have no idea which DMC threads it is suggesting.

Ah, looks like there's a bug with my code on Firefox. I tried it out and it was super unreliable, sorry about that.

I'll try to figure out what that is, in the meantime it still seems to work fine on Chrome. No promises about IE

edit: btw, just added major lines every 10 cells, looks much nicer, thanks for the suggestion funkymonkey!