Craftgrrl - Where Crafters Unite!

Hello! I looked through the user info links and tried a journal search and didn't find anything, so here's hoping my journal search-fu isn't failing. I searched 'stitch computer program' 'stitch computer software' 'cross stitch computer' and the names of a few programs I'm thinking of buying, and it found nothing for any of them.

I'm currently making my own cross stitch patterns via photoshop, but it's rather time-consuming to make a really useable pattern. I've been looking into a good automatic cross stitch pattern making program. Unfortunately, most of the ones I find the free trial download either flat out doesn't work, or when I get it, it's not particularly good. I've noticed a real problem translating black in most programs I've tried- they try to make it dark green, or dark blue, so if you've already got that color in your image you can't tell what is supposed to be black and what isn't. Or else they make it far too pixelly, and there's no way you could tell what the original image was supposed to be.

So I'd like to know what people are using, how happy they are with it, and what some of the shortcomings are. I'm hoping not to spend more than 60, unless the best-best-everyone-loves program is more than that. I don't do machine embroidery, so I don't need a program that is capable of converting to machine embroidery patterns.

I've running on 32bit Windows Vista, but I'm upgrading to Windows 7 relatively soon. I'm finding most cross stitch making programs were last updated for XP, and then abandoned by their creators.

Thanks! I'm going to cross-post this to stitchers as well.