Start with the finished size
A stitch is one discrete cell. Increasing the grid preserves details but adds work and increases finished dimensions. Divide stitch width by fabric count to estimate inches for one stitch per hole interval; confirm your fabric and stitching method.
Simplify deliberately
Crop to the subject before uploading. Large, high-contrast shapes survive downsampling better than tiny lettering or subtle facial features. The tool averages image areas and groups their colors, so a gradient can turn into several bands.
Inspect isolated cells in the editor. Painting a few stray cells often makes the pattern easier to stitch than merely reducing the total number of colors.
Choose dimensions before choosing thread
For an 80-stitch-wide pattern on 14-count fabric worked over one fabric interval, the stitched width is about 5.71 inches. Add your own border and finishing allowance; neither is included in the stitch count. On a different fabric count, the same cell pattern produces a different physical size without changing its palette or number of stitches.
Set a modest palette first and inspect the conversion. A logo may need only a few distinct colors, while a photograph may need more to retain shading. Increasing the color maximum does not guarantee that every added color improves readability. The quantizer can return fewer colors when the image contains fewer distinct groups.
Clean the grid before committing
Use the color selector and Paint selected color to repair isolated cells. Zoom into eyes, lettering and narrow outlines because a one-cell change can alter their meaning. The grid is capped at 150 cells in either direction and preserves the source aspect ratio; a tall image may therefore produce a narrower pattern than the requested width. Save the original image and an unedited project before a large cleanup pass so you can compare versions.