You can attach specific symbols to colors. This is done from the color properties dialog which you bring up by double clicking on a color in the "normal" palette. The dialog looks something like the image here
Each color has two symbols associated with it:
The first variant is only possible to use with an imported image where you have the original. If you have a decent image processing program (i.e. most other than Paint, which by the way is nore or less the only one I use :) then that program most probably can reduce the number of colors in the original image. This process is sometimes referd to as reducing the number of bits in the image. Since an imported image never can contain more colors than the original this method can work very well.
The second variant was sent to me by a user of Stitch, Angela M. Cable. Her method is manual, and thus works even if you don't have the original image.Reducing colors. Hah, took me a while to find this, but once you do, it makes reducing colors a *lot* easier. Let's say you've imported a photo, there are going to be a ton of thread colors. The *first* thing to do rather than trying to sort and combine colors is to hit the Pattern Properties button. Click on the "No." column header to sort this column. You'll probably see that at the top of the list there are now a whole bunch of colors where there are fewer than a dozen stitches in a particular color. Make note of these colors. Close the dialog. Mouseover the Color Palette to find the first color's name. Click it. Use the find features to hunt down instances of the color. I've found that just replacing all instances of the color might not be the best way, sometimes it will show up in funny spots... sky with clouds for example get some strange colors put in. Instead I look at the colors surrounding the stitch and pick one of those colors to change it to.
