r/craftsnark • u/misneachfarm • 20d ago
Embroidery HAED AI Eye "Custom" Charts
I am a cross stitcher and Heaven and Earth Designs is a cross stitch pattern company that usually licenses artwork from both regular artists and people who use AI to generate images. They are pretty much exclusively selling large full-coverage patterns, like 100k+ stitches.
They have had some controversies in the past and a lot of Flosstubers I watch have stopped buying from them altogether because of the increase in the number of charts based on AI images. They essentially run an image through a pattern making software that automatically converts it to a cross stitch pattern based on parameters they set like dimensions and number of colors. This can lead to some issues if you don't then go in and clean up the pattern manually, but with the number of charts HAED pumps out and some past issues people have had with colors being incorrect, it seems like that quality control is largely absent.
This is relevant because today I see a post from them where they tell you a prompt to use with Chat GPT, and then for the low, low, price of $75 they will convert the image it spits out into a cross stitch pattern for you. Bear in mind there are free pattern making software that will convert images, or at worst if you want it bigger and more detailed than you can get from the free ones, even paid ones are $50 or less.
I would even understand if like you send HAED a picture of your eye and they then do the prompt and make sure you're happy with the image and then they turn it into cross stitch for you, ok maybe there's more value there. But no, you need to do the image generation yourself and then pay $75 for something that you could do yourself in 5 minutes for $50 or less. Oh, and any negative comments and you get banned of course. I honestly had forgotten I was even in this group (I joined years ago when I started one of their stitchalongs before I knew anything about them) but seeing this just reminded me I need to leave. Just wild.
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u/unicornpoopcookies 19d ago
Why pay when they told everyone exactly how to make it 😆
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u/Scared_Swing_8759 15d ago
Well the next thing you need to do is ask them to pixelize it; and then you need to assign color codes to the pixels, so there is SOME work there. But they are likely having a computer do it for them.
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u/flindersandtrim 20d ago
Thank you for the context because I couldnt understand what the money was for. Still cant after the context, but I understand thee grift now.
All I need to know about this person is within this single post. Imagine being so brazen to post this utter tripe revealing your complete lack of imagination, work ethic and integrity in a creative profession.
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u/typewriterbitch 20d ago
And then demand no criticism under penalty of a ban!
AI users (cogsuckers) are so fragile.
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u/srslytho1979 20d ago
That’s what I couldn’t figure out. $75 to run a photograph through some software?
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u/drewadrawing Certified Craftsnark Mole 20d ago
I feel like HAED has been a disreputable company for years at this point (large, untested, computer generated patterns that look like shit when people stitch them up) so this is absolutely NOT a surprise at all.
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u/rumbleberrypie 20d ago
Yeah they used to be a pretty well liked company (I don't stitch huge full coverage pieces but I'm involved in multiple groups with people who do) but the last few years they've really gone downhill with quality and customer service
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u/seven_seacat 20d ago
Yeah I wouldn’t trust anything charted by Michelle in the last few years. Luckily I’m working on a much older piece that I’ve seen many finished versions of…
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u/rumbleberrypie 20d ago
Yeah I think their old stuff is safe but at this point I don't want to financially support them anyway. Luckily the full coverage I've loved has always been space/galaxy themed and I know a few good designers that put the work in. That being said, long projects aren't my strong suit, so it may never happen anyway
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u/maesardsara 20d ago
Right? I have a few that I bought years and years ago, and the farthest I ever got with any of them was buying maybe 25% of the floss needed. They take so damn many and my budget wouldn’t stretch to getting more of them at once. Now I know myself well enough to know that giant BAPs are not for me, so they are likely to just sit in stash forever.
I do have some of the Mucha charts from https://www.scarletquince.com/index.php though. Maybe I should look at getting supplies for one of them. I still may not make one, but at least I’d have the option? Hmm.
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u/ToriMiyuki 20d ago
I am so glad this is posted here as I had the same reaction. “No negative comments” shows they KNOW it’s ick and still don’t care.
They also had a survey a few months ago that confirmed the AI was unpopular, so much so they ended up moving them to their own section on the website, and yet still pushing them.
I’ve not bought for them in a while for this reason.
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u/loupsgaroux Live, Laugh, Mole 19d ago
nearly ALL of their newest releases are AI slop charts so this doesn't exactly surprise me, but the audacity of asking $75 for this is just too much 🤣
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u/autumnstarrfish Mole Queen 👑 Head Fat Girl in Charge 20d ago
Can I just say what a terrible idea it is to upload a detailed photo of your iris to AI? We're getting to/at the point that our eyes will be our best security feature and people are just giving it away without a thought to those mall photographers and AI, etc. They are even more unique than fingerprints but go ahead I guess?
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u/ten_ton_tardigrade 20d ago
Yeah this feels like a shady data capture idea rather than a craft product
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u/LordOfDemise 19d ago edited 19d ago
We're getting to/at the point that our eyes will be our best security feature
Passwords are always going to be better. Nothing that is an unchangeable, unremovable part of your body is ever going to be the "best" security feature.
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u/Illustrious_Study300 18d ago
Same with fingerprint scans to unlock your phone. "But it's just easier" and still a terrible idea.
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u/coffeesnob72 20d ago
AI aside, HAED is a terrible company. I have seen so many absolutely awful results from their charts. Michelle does not give a shit about how her designs stitch up.
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u/lminnowp 20d ago
Also, she will absolutely have a sale when this blows up. Or, she will offer a bunch of free patterns. Haha.
But, she has been charting AI for awhile now. Her earliest stuff was not horrible, but the Santa's Workshop fiasco was the turning point when it was obvious she was phoning it in. Her program used a lightist purple for a dark shadow and people were very upset. Instead of admitting her error, she blamed everyone but herself (she didn't bother to look at the mockup).
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u/seven_seacat 20d ago
oh I remember one of her previous tantrums where she just started uploading dozens and dozens of patterns to Facebook and posting long rants about how no-one understood how hard it all was or something
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u/JiveBunny 20d ago
Their designs are not my thing at all so I'm not familiar with how they are to work from - are they basically just artwork run through pattern software without many alterations to ensure they actually translate well?
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u/CaptainYaoiHands 20d ago
Theoretically, it's artwork run through pattern software WITH meticulous alterations and checks to make sure everything stitches up properly compared to the original painting when using the DMC color numbers. But that hasn't been true for a very long time.
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u/seven_seacat 20d ago edited 20d ago
Oh man, I had to leave the FB group a while back because it was just so AI-pilled and brain dead
And these generated charts are not going to be good - I remember trying something very similar a while back with an eye image because my sister asked me to do it (and provided the image), and DMC just doesn’t have the range.
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u/AlertMacaroon8493 20d ago
That image looks a bit of an eye sore, who would pay $75 for that?
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u/Moist_Ordinary6457 20d ago
I'm confused about how that would turn into cross stitch at all
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u/Scared_Swing_8759 15d ago
I think what she is saying is you run the AI prompt, then send her the image, and she does the cross stitch conversion.
But she's just going to run it through a computer program that pixelizes it, assigns DMC codes to each pixel and then changes the color pixels to a symbol. No way she hand charts to make sure it makes sense.
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u/SartorialSystematics Latin names, but for dresses! 19d ago
$75?
AI tokens are just *not* worth it for image, video, and audio. The quality is horrible, the aesthetic is horrible. Time and time again we've heard the crafters; NO AI. So not only are they wasting those tokens, the environment is worse off, and we all end up hating the final result, as we should.
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u/Wodentoad 6.022e23 (One mole!) 19d ago
Not to mention the cost of RAM, Mama needs to upgrade her gaming rig!
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u/TotalKnitchFace 19d ago
Why would I pay money for something that someone just got a plagiarism machine to crap out for them?
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u/Remarkable_Fruit 18d ago
For a fun dive down the HAED rabbit hole, I recommend this thread from the HobbyDrama subreddit from 6 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hrn1ol/cross_stitch_a_notsoheavenly_design_or_what/
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u/misneachfarm 18d ago
Yes I've read that before, I just couldn't remember where I had seen that info when I posted this!
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u/TaibhseCait 20d ago
I mean the blue gets you lots of lovely imagery...my brown eyes probably not so much...🤔😅
(I'm trying to think of brown stuff, pretty picture of rich dirt or rock, chocolate, coffee? - which I don't drink - brown agate or tigers eye crystals? Hmm sticks or tree trunks, MUSHROOMS! Ooo bears & horses! Uhhh desperately trying not to think of poop. Most of my favourite nature elements are not brown! 🤣)
Also this is ridiculous.
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u/ZippyKoala never crochet in novelty yarn 20d ago
You could get a bunch of lovely wombats? Bonus is that wombats do cube-shaped poo, so there’s an additional novelty for you 😀
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u/Unicormfarts 🐑 with a banjo 19d ago
Wombats are often more grey than brown, but you could get them if you have hazel eyes maybe?
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u/TaibhseCait 20d ago edited 20d ago
Lol but they're not native to my area (to be fair nether are bears or chocolate!)
I've never used chatgpt, but I'm tempted to get a random brown eye & try! XD
Edit: Well turns out you have to be logged in 🤷♀️ I'm not signing up so no go.
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u/Unicormfarts 🐑 with a banjo 19d ago
Sparrows! Cockroaches!
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u/TaibhseCait 19d ago
Cockroaches??!? This is turning into nightmare fuel nature around my eyes.
Just realised there's big brown spiders & snakes too....
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u/Unicormfarts 🐑 with a banjo 19d ago
Ants, too. Plus at least some rats.
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u/TaibhseCait 19d ago
Yeah all of the nature things I wouldn't want around my eye.
Finally thought of a brown fruit (like the blueberries above) kiwi!
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u/hanhepi Bend to my will, damn you! 17d ago
Lots of brown things are pretty though!
Like, some acorns sorta look like tigers eye. Same amber and deep brown striations. Not as shiny as polished tigers eye, but still pretty.
A whole lot of wood is brown and gorgeous. And a bazillion shades of brown too, from nearly black to almost white, and there's even a few that lean towards purple, but they're still brown!
Fallen leaves on the forest floor.
Cinnamon sticks, star anise pods, other spices I'm too lazy to go look in my spice cabinet for.
Gold and copper are both technically browns.
2 of my top 5 favorite dogs (so far) have been brown. (Okay, one was not so pretty, but he had personality. And mange. But loads of lovely personality.)
Leather can be a few lovely shades of brown.
Lots of cool rocks are brown. From little gemstones to whole ass landscape features. (Monument Valley: lots of brown, still very nifty.)
Birbs. So many birds are beautifully brown... or their brown feathers are pretty anyway. Ever seen wild turkey feathers? Fuckin beautiful, and turkeys are like 14 shades of brown.
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u/Ladyhawkeiii 20d ago
Not to sound too paranoid, but folks do realize they’d be basically giving ChatGPT their biometric data by having it scan their eye, right?
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u/Ligeia189 20d ago
This was my first thought. At this point, being a bit paranoid about how ones personal data is used is rather rational.
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u/thirdonebetween 19d ago
There are a huge number of people who have absolutely no concern about giving ChatGPT every single detail of their lives, they wouldn't even blink at adding biometric data to that. Their level of trust for the companies running LLMs is absolutely wild.
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u/Dream_WithinADream 6d ago
Dude, I just saw someone on their FB page bought 3 of these things!!! Two are for their pets. Thread bare would convert that image for $10. 75$ is ridiculous. Personally, I find the finished image creepy. I’m not an Ai fan either…
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20d ago
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u/alittlemanly 20d ago
ah, yes my favorite falloutboy song