Turn a photo into a coloring page
Clean black line art from a photo or drawing, sized to a printable Letter or A4 page. Free, no signup, no watermark, and your photo never leaves this computer.
Lines you can colour inside
The tool looks for places where the photo changes sharply from light to dark, keeps only the crest of each change so every edge becomes a single line, and then joins faint stretches to the strong lines they belong to. What comes out is black line on white, with no grey shading, which is what a printer and a crayon both want.
The Detail control works as a share of the picture rather than a fixed contrast number. That's why the same setting gives a sensible page on a crisp drawing and on a soft photo, instead of "everything" on one and "nothing" on the other.
What people make with it
- Colouring pages of a pet, a house, a child's favourite toy or a holiday photo.
- Tracing templates for painting, embroidery transfers or wood burning.
- Engraving artwork. Line art engraves cleanly as a raster image; switch on white-on-black if your software treats white as the burn.
- A starting point for a cut file. Thicken the lines, then take the PNG to the converter or the stencil maker.
Getting a clean page
- Start with the subject large in the frame. Crop before you upload if you can.
- If the background is busy, lower Detail until the subject's outline is complete and the background has mostly gone.
- Raise Ignore texture for fur, hair, grass and fabric.
- Set Line weight to 2 or 3 for young children or for printing small.
- Download the Letter or A4 page and print at 100%.
Honest limit: this is edge detection, not an illustrator. It won't invent a clean outline where the photo has none (a black cat against a dark sofa), and it doesn't know which lines matter. For a photo like that, try a different shot.
Questions
Which photos make good colouring pages?
One clear subject, reasonably large in the frame, on a plain or blurred background: a pet, a car, a building, a flower, a portrait. Busy scenes turn into busy pages, because every edge in the photo is a line on the page. If the background is cluttered, clear it first with the background remover (it works best on plain backdrops), then come back.
Why are there so many little lines on fur, grass or fabric?
Texture is made of edges too. Raise Ignore texture, which blurs the photo slightly before looking for lines so only the big shapes survive, and raise Drop crumbs to remove the short leftovers. Lowering Detail does the rest.
Is this the same as a "sketch filter"?
No. A sketch filter keeps shading and tone. This finds edges and draws them as solid lines on white, with nothing in between, so there are closed areas to colour and a printer prints clean black. That is what a colouring page needs.
What does the printable page download give me?
A PNG the size of a Letter or A4 sheet at 300 dpi, with the drawing centred inside a half-inch margin. The resolution is written into the file, so print it at 100% (switch off "fit to page") and it comes out exactly the page size. Wide images get a landscape page automatically.
Can I sell colouring books made with it?
The pages are yours, but the rights in the original photo still apply. Use your own photos, or ones whose licence allows derivative works. Tracing someone else's photo doesn't make it yours.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Your browser decodes the image and the lines are found by code running on this page. Nothing leaves this computer, which also means family photos stay family photos.