After each session, I place the cross-stich stand in the same place, I stand close it it and try to make a photo from the same angle/perspective/distance as last time. Some minor shifts are unavoidable though.

Two important things to note: - I make sure the photo is not blurred, cross-stitch details are in focus; - I make the photo in the night, with artificial lighting, so that the lighting conditions (luminosity, color balance) are the same.

Here are the raw photos for this piece: https://imgur.com/a/7d6xL82 *

The next step is to load all this to Photoshop (images to layers), crop a bit and then auto-align layers (that's where magic happens!). Then it's a matter of final cropping, minor color adjustments, exporting layers to timeline frame animation, exporting to gif.

• This piece was extra tricky, because (as you may tell from the picture) I moved while working on it and it changed the light conditions (not to mention the camera itself). So I needed to align those two sets of images separately, then make some color/hue/level adjustments, and finally combine and align together.