GuideSeptember 30, 2026 · 8 min read

Everfold, My Colorful World, Us in Colors and Memory Pencil: one page per photo, or two?

By Julien CornilleCo-founder and publication director, Memory Pencil

Everfold, My Colorful World and Us in Colors turn each photo into one black-and-white line-art page. Memory Pencil, which wrote this comparison, makes two: a color reference page of the memory, then the same scene to color.

Two-page spread of a coloring album: on the left a colored-pencil illustration of a child on a beach at sunset, on the right the same scene as line art, ready to color

All four services make the same promise: you send your photos, you get a printed coloring book where your family is recognizable, a gift for a child from age 3 as much as for an adult. What sets them apart comes down to one question, and it decides the rest: what does a photo become once it is in the book?

Everything about Everfold, My Colorful World and Us in Colors comes from their public pages, read on September 30, 2026, with a link to each one further down.

At a glance

At Everfold, My Colorful World and Us in Colors, a photo becomes one page of black-and-white line art.
At Memory Pencil, it becomes two pages: the memory illustrated in color on the left, as a color reference page, and the same scene to color on the right.
On gift day, you are either leafing through outlines to fill in, or already through an illustrated album.
Once everything is colored, only the two-page spread keeps the memory intact next to the colored version.

Open Memory Pencil album: on the left page, the colored-pencil illustration of a child on a beach at sunset; on the right page, the same scene as line art to color; the original printed photo lies in front of the album — The original photo, then the same scene twice in the book: the color illustration on the left, the page to color on the right.

What a photo becomes, service by service

	Everfold	My Colorful World	Us in Colors	Memory Pencil
Pages per photo	1	1	1	2
Color keepsake page	No	No	No	Yes: the illustration of the photo
Page to color	Line art, black on white	Line art, black on white	Line art, black on white	The same scene as line art, facing the illustration
How the service describes it	"Premium Mono Matte", line drawings	"detailed line art"	"elegant line art"	"a keepsake page and a coloring page"
Every page reviewed	Not stated	Yes, by a designer	Final checks mentioned	Yes, by our team
Color reference while coloring	None in the book	None in the book	None in the book	The illustration, on the facing page

All four personalize the cover, and Us in Colors specifies that its cover photo is in color. The difference is inside the book: what you look at, and what you color.

The day it is given: a black-and-white book, or an illustrated one

Two hands lifting a hardcover album out of a cardboard box lined with pink tissue paper

A line-art coloring book is designed to be filled in. When it is unwrapped, you turn pages of black outlines on white: the faces are there, recognizable, and the colors will come with the pencils. With a color keepsake page for every photo, the first read feels like an album. You see the beach, the birthday, the family dog again, in color, before picking a pencil. For a grandparent, that first leaf-through is already part of the gift.

Does color help memory?

Adults recognize photos of natural scenes 5 to 10% better when they first saw them in color rather than in black and white, a measure of visual memory, not of how a gift is received (Wichmann, Sharpe and Gegenfurtner, Max Planck Institute, 2002). In babies aged 2 to 12 months, an eye-tracking study found longer attention to book pages with bright, contrasting colors than to achromatic or desaturated pages (Newman et al., Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2026). As far as we know, no study directly compares a color coloring book with a line-art one. These two studies are about neither illustrations nor gifts: they only show that, for visual memory, color is not a detail.

While coloring: a color reference right there

A child's hand coloring the line-art page of a child on a beach with colored pencils, sky and sea already partly colored

Facing a line-art page on its own, you color from memory, or by fetching the photo on a phone. With the two-page spread, the color reference is on the left, on paper. A 3- or 4-year-old finds the color of the T-shirt or the sky at a glance, with no screen. An older child or an adult takes inspiration from it, or picks other colors on purpose.

Once colored: the memory stays intact

In a one-page-per-photo book, the coloring covers the only version of the memory: if a 3-year-old scribbles over the page, the memory goes with it. In a two-page-per-photo book, the color illustration is not colored in. It stays as it is, next to the child's version, and the finished book keeps both.

The three one-page-per-photo services

Everfold, based in Bristol, UK, turns photos into line drawings, one page per photo, printed in "Premium Mono Matte". My Colorful World, based in Florida, talks about "detailed line art" reviewed by a designer, one page per photo on US Letter size. Us in Colors, based in Paris, turns memories into "elegant line art", each photo becoming one page of the book.

Sources: Everfold, pricing and formats and FAQ; My Colorful World, FAQ and product page; Us in Colors, home page and photo upload page.

When one page per photo is the better fit

If you want to see the whole book before paying: Everfold shows the full preview for free, with no card. At Memory Pencil, the free trial covers one photo.
If you have lots of photos: Everfold takes up to 80 pages and also offers an A4 format.
If you mostly color with markers: My Colorful World prints on one side only, on a large US Letter format, so the ink does not bleed through.
For the same number of pages, a one-page-per-photo book holds twice as many photos.

Our take: for a gift that is leafed through the moment it is opened

This is our opinion, and we stand by it: if the gift has to delight the moment it is opened, for a 3-year-old as much as for an adult, choose a book that arrives already in color. A line-art book is a fine object to fill in. A gift is also judged in the second it is opened, and with a color illustration facing every page to color, you recognize your memories right away, leaf through them like an album, then keep that version untouched once the coloring is done.

See the formats of the personalized coloring book, compare it with a classic photo book, or read how we make it in how we make your coloring album.

Create your coloring album

Designed in France, checked page by page before printing.

How many memories to transform?

Create my album

Frequently asked questions

Do Everfold, My Colorful World or Us in Colors print a color page for each photo?

According to their public pages on September 30, 2026, no: each turns a photo into one line-art page to color, and none of them presents a color keepsake page inside the book.

From what age can you give a two-pages-per-photo book?

From age 3, when a child starts coloring, with no upper limit: an adult colors it to unwind, a grandparent first leafs through it like a family album.

Can you see the result before ordering?

Yes: you can turn one of your photos into its two pages for free, the color illustration and the page to color. For the printed book, after ordering, you see every page and can replace photos for 24 hours; every page is then reviewed by our team before printing.

Method and sources

This comparison looks at one criterion only: what a photo becomes inside the book. The descriptions of the other three services were read on September 30, 2026 on their public pages, cited above, and Memory Pencil, which publishes this article, is one of the four services compared. We will update it if their books change; if you spot a mistake, write to us and we will fix it.