How do you tuft a picture?

Choose The Picture

The first and one of the most important steps of this journey is choosing an appropriate photograph of the pet you want to create a portrait of. It can be seen as an unimportant action in all phases of creation however if you end up with a less favorable photograph to work with, it can make the process miserable. Photographs with low quality or the ones shot in a dark environment can make your job so much harder. It would make it super challenging to determine the colors of the portrait than it needs to be. A picture from a close distance with a good amount of natural light would be sufficient enough to work with. You do not need professionally taken photography to work with it, just a good one taken from a smartphone will be excellent.

Edit The Photo To Make It Easy To Tuft

You can find a detailed step-by-step explanation for multiple available methods to achieve good quality results for your custom portrait rug. Feel free to choose which one is the best method for you between these options. Because all of these techniques will end up with really similar final images. It is only related to tools you have available to use and your experience with mentioned applications. If you never heard of the software mentioned in this article, do not worry about it. I believe you can still use it to transform your image for tufting, but maybe in this case tracing over the image would be easier.

Tracing Over The Picture

The simpler and the most effective method is probably tracing over the picture. You can use any drawing application to do this step. I personally prefer to use Procreate on an iPad to create my images. 

After you upload your image to the drawing application, you need to determine the different colors you would like to use when you are creating the image. Depending on the size of the portrait you would like to achieve the number of the recommended colors can be different however, for a small size rug (30cm x 30cm or 12’ x 12’) it is not recommended to work with more than 6-7 different colors of yarns. Using a lot of different colors of yarn with small details can be extremely difficult and challenging.

In the case of large-size pieces, the number of colors can be adjusted accordingly. If you are not a beginner tufter with enough tufting experience you can estimate this quite easily. Once you determine the colors, you can draw borders between the different shades of the image and fill these areas with the corresponding colors. 

This method is the most flexible option among the others, you can express your creativity and edit the image according to your imagination if you would like to. You can see a timelapse video of this step down below.

Adobe Photoshop

The next alternative is editing the image with photo editing software, specifically Adobe Photoshop. I decided to mention and show the steps with Adobe Photoshop because it is clearly the most popular software among other alternative applications. However, if you are using any other similar software feel free to use it, most probably you can still find the same filters and settings in other similar software too.

Once you open the software firstly you need to upload your chosen image to the application to be able to edit it.

Then it is necessary to separate our object from the background to have better results in the end. To do this, the simplest way is to choose the Subject option under the Select menu.

If the tones of the image are relatively close to each other it can be a bit more difficult to remove the background from the main object. But you can easily adjust it manually and correct the wrong parts.

At this stage, you need to decide which part of the image you would like to work with. In this case, I decided to create a rug only with the face of Pumpkin Pie, so I change the selection to face only.

Once you selected the area of the final image, with right-click on the mouse it is necessary to choose the Layer via Copy option.

We are ready to go and do the final step of the process. Under the Image > Mods tabs you can find the Indexed Color option. With this option, you can determine the number of colors you would like to have in your design.

You can decide how many different colors you would like to use in your design in this step. According to the size of the rug, you want to have and the complexity of it, this number can vary. It would be best to enter different values and see which one looks best for you.

And finally, your image is ready for tufting.

Adobe Illustrator

It is possible to imagine this technique as a combination of the previous two methods. Adobe Illustrator’s user interface is quite similar to Adobe Photoshop, if you have ever used one of them you can find your way easily in the other one too. 

After you uploaded your image to the software, it is needed to determine the shades of the colors you would like to use and create a color palette with them.

It is quite an easy process to follow. It may take a bit longer time compared to Photoshop but you have more freedom for the design similar to the tracing by hand. The only difference here is tracing over the image digitally with a vector pen.

Once you cover all the parts you would like to have in your rug design, it is ready to be transferred to the tufting cloth.

Print It Out And Transfer It To Tracing Paper

The final option is the most simple one. It does not require any special software or devices. I specifically wanted to offer this method too because not everyone can have access to the previously mentioned applications or devices.

The only thing it is necessary to be done is to print your chosen picture. Once you have the picture printed you can trace it over with tracing paper or you can use a glass table with a light placed under the glass surface to make it easier to see the original image. If you would like you can also trace directly over the tufting cloth as well. However tracing over the cloth can be more challenging, and it is not recommended for complex designs.