Coloring books are a great way to keep a child's attention and occupy their time.
They also provide a creative outlet for a child's inner Picasso that is several times more preferable than your walls or new furniture. However, you can even make these for yourself. After all, coloring can be a way to relieve stress and meditate, so why not have fun coloring some beautiful scenery or a favorite character from your childhood?
Follow these steps to learn how to turn any photo (be it of you, a place you visited on vacation, or even just something you found online) into a colorless page.
Step 1: Go to http://pixlr.com and click the link "Open photo editor." Find the image you'd like to use from any of the sources listed on the next page that loads.
Step 2: Select Desaturate from the dropdown menu labeled Adjustment. The image should now be black and white.
Step 3: Right-click on the Background layer in the Layer window on the right-hand side. Select Duplicate layer from the menu that appears.
Step 4: Open the Adjustment menu again, this time selecting Invert from the list of options (make sure that the layer Background copy is selected in the Layer window).
Step 5: Click on the Layer settings button in the Layer window (this button looks like the two arrows pointing left and right). A drop-down menu labeled Mode will appear. Change the mode to Add.
Step 6: Now open the Filter menu and select the option Gaussian blur. A new window will appear with a slider in it. Adjust the slider level until your image is to your liking (this will vary with your taste and the source image used).
Step 7: Flatten the image by right-clicking on Background layer and selecting Merge down.
Step 8: Your image is probably rather gray at this point. Open the Adjustment menu and select Levels.
Step 9: The top part of the Layers window will have what looks like a graph displayed in it with three sliders (black, gray, and white) at the bottom. Move the black slider almost all the way to the right, and then adjust the positions of the gray and white slider until the outlines in the image visibly sharpened. Like step 6, there is no "proper" position to place them at, so just adjust them until the end result looks good.
You're done! Just save and/or print the image and give it to someone to color (or color them yourself!). If you're feeling brave, share a custom-colored picture in the comments section.