Thomas Diamond Painting

Just to keep you in the loop, my latest completed diamond painting;



and, my current "work in progress";

[Super]

Those are pretty cool. Wouldn't it be neat if there was software that could take a photo and convert it into a template to do one of these?

As it happens there are a good number of companies out there that will take a photo of your choice and produce a custom painting from it.  People often use them to get one made of a shot of the family or similar.

One seller I know in China has a site Sunature that offers them at very competitive prices.

[Super]

None of those look like the beaded product you produced...are they?

None of those look like the beaded product you produced...are they?

Unfortunately most sellers don't show you a finished example, instead just the image they are based on.  You tend to learn as you go which type of images work best as its all down to resolution, type of gem (square or round) and the nominal size of the painting canvas.

[Super]

So there is software that will map out colors and beads that takes a real photo and turn it into a stencil so to speak?

In a manner yes, what they use I think is a variation on the DMC software that is used to take a photo and convert it into a cross stitch canvas, this is very similar except it is sticking beads/gems/drills (various people call them various things) onto a canvas with a printed picture with a symbol for each pixel/gem and a self-adhesive layer.

If you want to get a custom one made you go find a sellter, order the size you want and supply them with the picture you want to have printed.  In return you receive a canvas printed to the size you paid for, a set of gems in the appropriate colours - on a bigger canvas you can get up to 40+ colours depending on the photo and a basic tool kit.  Here's an example picture of what you get;



The above example is a typical standard retail package, but the customs are similar in terms of what you get.  Some people may baulk a bit at the number of gems, and indeed a bigger canvas can take quite a few thousand gems to complete.  But I find making them up very relaxing, a bit like a puzzle i suppose and at the end of it you end up with a quite lovely looking picture fo long as you get one of the right size for the picture content.  Fundamental rule is the more detail you have the bigger you should go canvas wise.  It also pays to get 'square' gems rather than round, some people claim them to be harder to use, but I personally don't and you have several distinct advantages.  Firstly they are 20% smaller than the round ones so you get 25% more resolution (i.e. 5 gems to a cm as opposed to 4 round gems per cm), they fit together without any gaps round them and the overall image effect is more like a mosaic than you get with the round gems.

[Super]

Thanks Nigel

I think it would be a great family heirloom if it was possible to make one from a picture of your childhood home or something memorable like that.