How to turn a photo into a paint by numbers kit you can actually paint

What makes a paint by numbers kit paintable?

Three things: regions wide enough to paint, a number inside each one, and not so many colours that the palette becomes a chore. Most converters get the first one wrong. They split the photo into colours pixel by pixel, which leaves hundreds of thin slivers along every edge. On screen it looks detailed. On canvas it is a region a millimetre wide with no room for a number and no way to paint it without going over the lines.

The fix is to measure every region at the size you will print and merge anything narrower than a brush into its neighbour. That is the narrowest region setting in the paint by numbers maker, in millimetres.

Which photos work best?

• One clear subject. A pet on a plain floor, a face against a wall, one building against the sky.
• Good, even light. Harsh shadows become their own regions, which can be striking or confusing.
• Not too small. A thumbnail has no detail to give; use the original photo from your phone.

A busy background turns into dozens of small regions you did not care about. Crop in close, or clear a plain background first with the background remover.

How do you make the kit, step by step?

1. Drop the photo into the paint by numbers maker.
2. Set the printed width of your canvas in inches. A 16-inch canvas holds much more detail than an 8-inch one.
3. Choose the number of paints. Start at 10 and look at the Painted view; add colours if faces or fur look flat.
4. Raise Simplify if skin, sky or fur has broken into patches. It smooths texture but keeps the edges.
5. Check the region count. A few hundred is an evening or two of painting; past a thousand is a long project.
6. Download the outline page with its key, the coloured reference, and the palette CSV.

How do you print it?

For paper, print the 300 dpi outline page at 100% (“actual size”) on heavy paper or card. For canvas, send the SVG to a canvas printer at the width you set: the outlines are vector paths, so they stay sharp at any size. Keep the coloured reference beside you while you paint.

How do you get the right paint colours?

The palette gives each colour a number, a plain name, a hex code and how much of the canvas it covers. The colours are the photo's own averages, not a paint brand's names. Either mix to the swatch by eye, or take the hex codes to a shop that colour-matches. The share column tells you how much of each to buy: the biggest region is number 1.

Sources

• Search demand for “photo to paint by number free”, “paint by numbers generator” and “color by number maker” read from Google autocomplete, 22 September 2026.
• The region sizes, colour numbering and palette described here are what the tool does; its tests check that thin regions are merged and numbers stay inside their regions.

Everything linked here is free to use, runs in your browser, and needs no account. If something in this post is wrong or out of date, it is worth telling us — the date at the top is the last time it was checked.