1. Open .bmp or .jpg image in Balarad Painter with menu File/Open Image.

2. Crop image with Selection Tool and menu Edit/Crop.

3. Resample image to required size with Image/Resample.

4. Select Background Color in Painter Tool Box. Basic colors (like Lime green R=0, G=255, B=0) are preffered. Fill all areas of image that should be not covered with stitches with Selection Tool and menu Edit/Delete Inside or Outside Selection.

5. Click Preview button in Preview window. Wait a second to see preview of embroidery design in Preview window. Select Hoop Size in Hoop Combo Box. Adjust Hoop position (red rectangle in Preview window) with mouse move and right mouse button pressed.

6. Click Compute Stitches button.  Program will start computing the stitches.

1. Open .bmp or .jpg image in Balarad Painter with File/Open Image menu.

2. Crop image with Selection Tool and menu Edit/Crop.

3. Resample image to required size with Image/Resample menu.

4. Select Background Color in Painter Tool Box, Fill all areas of image that should be not covered with stitches with Selection Tool and menu Edit/Delete.

Deleted areas are filled with Background Color chosen in Tool Box. Sfumato Stitch recognises two background colors (select in ‘Sfumato Stitch Controls’ window). The difference between these two background colors is that Sfumato Stitch produces thin outline around areas of first background color while areas of second background color are without outline. To achieve desired effect, background colors of image and background colors in ‘Sfumato Stitch Controls’ must be exactly the same (same RGB components). It is highly recommended to use basic background colors, like default Lime (R=0, G=255, B=0) and Fuchsia (R=255, G=0, B=255).

5. Click Preview button in Preview window. Wait a second to see preview of embroidery design in Preview window. If you want to create multicolor design with automatically chosen colors, hit Auto button from Controls window instead of Preview button. Select Hoop Size in Hoop Combo Box. Adjust Hoop position (red rectangle in Preview window) with mouse move and right mouse button pressed. Sfumato Stitch Control window contains various controls. You can save all settings to disk with use of ‘Save Sfumato Stitch Project’ button. Please note that image is not saved with the project. You have to save image separately with use of Painter ‘File’ menu. Warning: Project file contains only link to image. If image is later moved to other location or deleted, project will be open without image and design cannot be generated. In this case, open image from new location.

6. Click Compute Stitches button.  Program will start computing the stitches.

After calculation of design, Sfumato will ask you whether to return to Embird Editor or not. Click Yes, and Sfumato will place finished design into Embird Editor for saving in desired embroidery format or for further editing. Please note: if you are using demo version of Embird, finished design may be truncated when it appears in Embird Editor.

Previous guide shows the basic simple way of creation of Sfumato design. For more information see Advanced Techniques. Following tips are intended to advice you what can be done to make better designs:

• Adjust image characteristics (equalize, brightness characteristics, color characteristics ...) prior to processing it in Sfumato.

• Hit Auto Button in Controls to let program automatically set colors and their number.

• Edit the color reduction, thread colors, thresholds and blending in More Controls window.

• Edit the Color Map of design if necessarry for optimum layout of colors.

Multicolor Design

To add color to Eva design, include following steps between steps 5 and 6 of previous guide:

a) Click on <<More button to access More Controls window. Enable color scale  4. Then click on either  palette color box 3 or 4 to adjust Palette Colors.

b) Place red dots representing Palette Colors into two biggest aggregations of colors (brightest spots on histogram). You can see corresponding Palette Colors on Color Palette on the right side. When you close this window, you can see new Color Scales in the More Controls window .

c) When clicking on Preview button, Sfumato will display new preview of design. Design is in two Color Scales, which means 5 thread colors: black (the Darkest Thread Color), dark and light brown and dark and light green. White (the Lightest Thread Color) is not present in this design because it is unncessarry on white Fabric (background).