Which setting to use, and when.
👟 Shoe vamp mode (sidebar) — tick to design a shoe: the outline guides you, and counts & kits follow the shoe shape. Untick for a free canvas — bookmarks, pouches, framed pieces — the whole grid opens up. Switching never deletes your work.
🖼 Choose a clear picture — bright, high-contrast images convert best. Use ✂ Crop to keep only the part you want; a face converts better than a whole crowd.
📏 Grid size = detail — stitches are your pixels. A simple motif: 50–80. A detailed picture: 150–300. If the result looks fuzzy, the picture is too detailed for the grid — raise the grid size or crop closer. Watch the project size readout: more stitches also means a physically bigger piece.
🎨 Flat colour mode — tick for flat art: clipart, logos, charts, cartoons (keeps edges crisp). Untick for photographs (smooths grain and speckle).
🌈 Max Colors (top bar) — 10–20 for simple designs (easier to bead), 40–60 for photos and rich shading. Too few merges shades into grey; too many makes the kit longer.
🧩 Overlay — keep base — tick when placing a motif on top of a background pattern you already made. The image's background is removed automatically; if too much or too little disappears, open the crop window and use ✦ Snap to Shape to select just the motif.
💾 Nothing is lost — Undo steps back, drafts auto-save every pause (watch the green corner toast), and My Designs slots keep what you choose to keep. Download your design file for safe-keeping on any device.
🛒 When you're happy — Bead list PDF gives the full shopping list; “Buy kit for this design” prices your exact chart, beads counted with a 10% buffer.