How to turn a photo into a coloring page, on iPhone and iPad
The family dog, a first birthday cake, the house you grew up in. Sketchy turns any picture on your iPhone or iPad into a clean coloring page in seconds, to paint in the app or to print for real crayons.
Four steps
- Open Sketchy and tap Start from a photo.
- Pick a picture from your photo library.
- Tap Create Page. Sketchy traces it as bold, clean line art.
- Paint it in the app, or print it and hand over the crayons.
Choosing a good photo
- One subject. A pet, a person or a favorite toy that fills most of the frame.
- Good light. Clear edges become clear lines; dark or blurry shots lose detail.
- A simple background. Fewer shapes behind the subject leave bigger spaces to color.
Made for small hands
Pages come out as big shapes with crisp outlines, and tap-to-fill never crosses the lines. The magic crayons paint rainbow sweeps, candy stripes, polka dots and glitter, there are crayon, marker and pencil brushes and stickers, and every coloring can replay itself as a short movie to share. If you would rather describe a page than photograph one, Sketchy is also an AI coloring page generator.
Sparks, not subscriptions
A photo conversion uses 4 sparks. Packs start at $1.99, never expire and never renew, and the free pages in Explore and the free storybooks cost nothing. Read the help pages and the privacy policy.
Questions
- How do I turn a photo into a coloring page?
- In Sketchy, tap Start from a photo, pick a picture from your library, and tap Create Page. Sketchy redraws it as bold black-and-white line art, ready to paint in the app or print.
- What kind of photos work best?
- One clear subject that fills most of the frame: a pet, a person, a toy, a cake, a favorite place. Busy crowds and dark, blurry shots give line art with less to hold on to.
- How much does a photo conversion cost?
- 4 sparks. Sparks come in packs from $1.99 that never expire and never renew, and if a page fails to draw its sparks come back automatically. There is no subscription.
- Can I print the page?
- Yes. Print it for real crayons, or paint it in the app with tap-to-fill that never crosses the lines.
- What happens to the photo I pick?
- Only the one photo you pick is sent, shrunk and without its location, through our server to an image service (Replicate) solely to draw the page. Our server keeps nothing; the image service keeps its own copy under its own policy. There are no accounts, no ads and no tracking. Finished pages stay on your device and in your own iCloud.
- Does it work on iPad?
- Yes, on iPhone and iPad. Pages and your sparks follow you between devices that share an iCloud account.