> kids paint-by-numbers
Paint by numbers
Numbered areas, color list and solution picture as a PDF for A4. From a built-in picture or from your own photo with a clear subject and large, even areas.
1: one large picture. 2, 4 or 6: a picture sheet with one shared color list.
Move with the arrow keys, choose with space bar or Enter. Pictures with only one color (heart, star, moon …) can only be chosen for a picture sheet.
Choose photo
or just drag it here.
JPG · PNG · WEBP · STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
Photos of other people’s children only with their parents’ consent. A template for this: photo consent (German).
Pencil set: each area gets the closest typical colored pencil, with a clear name. From the photo: the colors of the photo, with the closest pencil name and the color value.
4 to 12, white counts.
More smoothing swallows fur, grass and image noise, but also fine details.
Each point takes the color that is most common around it. This makes frayed edges smoother.
3.5 to 15 mm. A circle with this diameter fits into every area, smaller areas merge into a neighbor.
Leave empty for no title. Up to 80 characters, for example: My house in summer
Light gray almost disappears under the color, the numbers are then gray. Printed lines of stems and rays stay black.
1 to 30. Same areas, but on each sheet different numbers belong to the colors. So nobody in a group can copy.
1 to 999999. Decides which number belongs to which color (and the pictures with “Random by No.”). Printed small at the bottom of the sheet; more sheets count up.
Needs a color printer and a lot of ink. After each: every sheet is followed by its solution; if you print double-sided, it ends up on the back, so better choose “At the end”. At the end: one solution for all sheets.
When printing, choose “Actual size” or “100%”, not “Fit to page”, otherwise the areas get smaller than set.
Your browser remembers nothing. “Save as file” writes settings, No., title and picture selection to a JSON file on your device. The photo is not in the file. If the title contains a name, it is in the file too.
Related: Coloring page from a photo · Mandalas to color · Crop the photo first
Nothing leaves this device: The photo is not uploaded and not stored, PDF and PNG are created only in your browser.
How it works
- 01Choose a built-in picture (or a picture sheet with 2, 4 or 6 pictures) or load your own photo.
- 02Choose a level: Easy (6 colors, areas from 10 mm), Medium (8 colors, from 6 mm) or Fine (12 colors, from 3.5 mm, for teens and adults). Everything can be changed individually, the preview updates right away.
- 03Set title, sheets and solution page, download the PDF and print at “Actual size”.
What happens in the background. A photo is reduced to at most 640 points on the long side (more does not help: An area smaller than its number cannot be colored), smoothed per color channel and reduced to a few colors. With the pencil set, every point gets the closest pencil color, the most common ones stay. With “From the photo”, a k-means method with a fixed start finds the colors, with no randomness at all. Calculations happen in the Lab color space, which measures color differences roughly the way the eye sees them. Then edges are calmed, connected areas are found, and areas that are too small are merged into the neighbor with the longest shared border, until a circle with the minimum size and its number fits into every area. With photos, narrow strips attached to a large area (narrower than half the minimum size) also merge into the neighbor. The borders are drawn as lines, simplified and slightly rounded at the corners. The same image and the same settings always give the same areas.
The pictures. All pictures are built here in the code from lines and curves, without images from the web. Pictures with only one color are only available on the picture sheet. Lines of a picture that are only decoration (stems, rays, seams) are printed too; if such a line would cut a color area into pieces without their own number, it is left out over the color. At the Easy level, small details such as strawberry seeds disappear.
The No. It only decides which number belongs to which color, and the pictures with “Random by No.”. Several sheets have the same areas, but each has its own No. and therefore different numbers.
Colors. On the sheet, each number has the color name as a word and an empty box to color in first. The color names are English. The pencil colors are typical colors without reference to a brand, your set may look different; if in doubt, the box the child colored in counts. The colored solution is always available in the preview and as PNG, in the PDF only if you want it.
Limits, so you do not search for long. The tool does not know objects, it only sees colors. Without AI, an arbitrary photo does not give clean areas: Faces become blotchy, lawns and leaves fall apart into many small pieces, shadows become their own areas. If a photo does not fit well, the preview says so and names what helps. You still get the PDF. The tool cannot open HEIC photos from the iPhone. Very large photos can exceed the browser’s memory, then a message appears. The tool has been tested with self-made test images; how well it works with your photo, the preview shows.
The files. The PDF has one A4 page per sheet, portrait or landscape depending on the image, with at least 12 mm margin, all lines and numbers as vectors. The PNG of the template and the PNG of the solution picture have 300 dpi and a white background. Only the areas of the photo go into the files, no metadata, no GPS.