Coloring in pictures is a soothing activity for children and has become increasingly popular for adults as well. Using GIMP, a free photo manipulation program, it is easy to create printable coloring pictures from digital photos from one's personal collection or from photos found online.
Children will love coloring pictures of themselves, family members, friends or their pets; they can even add fantastical details. This tutorial covers the simplest method of changing photos into coloring pictures. This method is a good one for changing photos of people into coloring pictures. A link to a more advanced method can be found at the end of the tutorial. Screenshots of the technique are also available below.
Steps to Creating the Picture
To create homemade coloring pages from a photo, follow these steps:
- Open an appropriate photo in GIMP. The best kind are clear, with strong colors and contrasts. If necessary, cut out excess background using the rectangle select tool (the uppermost left hand button in the tool box). Drag the cursor until a rectangle surrounds the desired object, then open up Image –> Crop to Selection. Remember to open File -> Save As and save this under another name to preserve the original photo file.
- Open up Filters –> Artistic –> Photocopy. Adjust the values so that the picture looks right, with a balance between the amount of white space and detail. In the screenshot example, Mask Radius was set to 40, Sharpness to 0.40, White Percentage to .3 and Black Percentage to 0.90. However, every photo will look best with slightly different values so judge them by the preview.
- Open Colors –> Threshold and move the black arrow to the right to darken and bring out the lines of the image. Now open up Filters –> Enhance –> Despeckle. Select Recursive (deselect Adaptive, if it is selected) and change the values to Radius: 3, Black Level: -1 and White Level: 255. Then press "OK." This may take a few moments. Once the despeckling process is finished, the image is finished. However, if the picture still has too much detail, or the background isn't wanted, erase it with the eraser tool. Remember, most of this process can be adjusted according to the needs of a particular photo, and the original photo has been saved. So, don't be afraid to play with the process.
Finally, print out the picture and break out the crayons. Some suggestions for the final product include: printing on card stock to make original greeting cards, bringing coloring pages on car trips to keep kids busy and stapling several pages together to create a small homemade coloring book.
This is one easy method for creating coloring pictures for the whole family to enjoy. If this was not successful on a particular photo, try following this method which creates more detailed pictures.
Rachel Sawaya - Rachel Sawaya is a freelance writer from New Zealand (who also has US citizenship), and currently lives in Auckland, the big smoke of New ...
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