Which photos make a good colouring page (and which don't)

JCBy Julien CornilleCo-founder and publication director, Memory Pencil

Not every photo makes a good colouring page. Framing, light, contrast: those are the criteria that separate a page you love colouring from a blurry mess that puts you off.

Turning a photo into a colouring page happens in two steps. First, extract the outlines of the image. Then simplify those outlines so you get a drawing you can colour without getting lost. The first step is mechanical. The second is where most consumer tools fall over.

Photos that make a good colouring page

Four criteria account for 90% of the result: a sharp face, light that creates contrast without flattening, a subject that takes up at least a third of the image, and a background that isn't too busy. A portrait taken outdoors in late afternoon usually ticks all four boxes. The lowest-risk way to find out is still to check it on your own photo with the free trial rather than judging from cherry-picked examples.

• Sharp face: any blur produces hesitant outlines and a messy drawing.
• Moderate contrast. A backlit face yields almost no usable lines.
• Medium to tight framing: group shots taken from too far end up as tiny silhouettes.
• Simple background: a wall, the sky, foliage. Not a packed market scene.

Photos that almost always fail

Short-arm selfies with wide-angle distortion, sleeping babies whose face disappears under the blanket, class photos taken from a distance, indoor flash shots: in all those cases, the outline extraction produces either too few lines (the face fades out) or too many lines (impossible to colour).

Simplification, the step that changes everything

Once the outlines are extracted, there's real work left. Strip the unnecessary details: fine wrinkles, t-shirt folds, foliage shadows. Thicken the structural lines: face, eyes, hair. Close the regions so they can be filled in with markers. That step, whether done by hand by an illustrator or by a properly trained AI model, is what separates a satisfying colouring page from a tangle of lines.

The role of paper in the final result

A beautiful drawing on bad paper makes a bad colouring page. On really thin paper (70 to 80 gsm), markers bleed and punch through, and you give up after two pages. We print our albums on 90 gsm uncoated paper. That isn't the weight of premium colouring books, which sit closer to 120 or 160 gsm. But it's the heaviest uncoated stock our print-on-demand partner offers, and it handles coloured pencils, pastels and water-based markers well. Alcohol markers like Sharpies will bleed through: keep a backing sheet handy.

A successful colouring page rests as much on the drawing's simplification as on the paper that receives it.

How long for a full album

For a personalised album of 6 to 24 photos, count on 1 business day of processing (extraction, simplification, layout, review), then printing: Memory Pencil ships within 5 to 7 business days of ordering, with carrier transit to the UK added on top. Services that promise a personalised album delivered in 24 hours are either doing raw extraction (mediocre output) or running pre-printed stock that they only personalise on the cover.

And if the printing timeline doesn't work for your occasion, the album also comes as a digital version (PDF): the same photo processing, with the download link emailed as soon as you pay, ready to print at home.