Question on making a pattern.

[butlerj]

I have an old photograph of my grandfather on his police patrol bike. I would love to turn this into a pattern but don't have a clue on how to go about it. When I looked on Google, it told me to use Photoshop but the last time I tried I messed things really bad. Any help or recommendations would be appreciated.

[don in brooklin on]

Steve Good has a video on estore that shows you how to create portraits.  The cost is $10 plus shipping.
http://www.stevedgood.com/estore/estore.html

Also, on Scroll Saw village there is a section in the section in the University that gives instruction for making portraits using Gimp.
http://www.scrollsawvillage.com/forums/forum/47-village-university/

There is a program called Coyote Stencil that cost $89 available at
http://www.carvingtechnologies.com/product/coyote-stencil-shop-3-0/

Good luck.

PS:  There are also some services that will do it.  One I know of is http://www.wolfwoodworking.ca/secondarypages/custompatterns.html

[wedo]

There are several pattern makers on Scroll Saw Village (http://www.scrollsawvillage.com/forums/) that sometimes help. Just post a picture and ask for help.

[dirtrider73068]

There are two free programs you can use inkscape and gimp. There is a learning curve, I tried a couple times one picture I made a pattern out of I did ok with but struggled with adding text to it, I then tried to make a portrait of my cat it was alright but I wasn't happy with so I gave up for now trying to figure out how to do it.

Also to make it easier to change a picture to a pattern the more clear and higher resolution the picture is the easier it is to work with, if not when you zoom in it pixalates where you get these blocks when you zoom in, thats using gimp, inkscape is a vetor program and won't do this when you zoom in to manipulate the picture to clean it up.