Make coloring page from photo

[Slotcar Bob]

I'm back!!!

Not sure I have the right name. Here's what I want to do. I want to take a photo, and make it outlines, so a child can color it. Walk me through it, guys. Thanks in advance.

[GarryP]

The procedure to do what you want (as I understand it) will very much depend on what the original image looks like and it probably won’t be simple to do.
Can you supply an example image and say which Affinity applications you have? That might help someone to give you some pointers.

[firstdefence]

There are quite a few ways to get something like a sketch effect but to get a line drawn image you would need to trace over the image using a small stroke on brush, but, that takes time. I guess you want a fast track effect at the compromise of quality so… 

1. Open the photo in Affinity Photo, make sure it is a pixel layer if not rasterise it by right clicking and selecting Rasterise.
2. Apply a Black and White adjust filter
3. Merge Visible
4. Duplicate the merged layer and change the blend mode to Add
5. Use Layer > Invert (CMD + i)
6. Add a Minimum Blur and set it to about 4px
7. Add a Levels adjustment and start to play around with the sliders, this step take a bit of personal tweaking but see Fig 2. on how I got the result I did.

Fig 1.

 

Fig 2.

Choosing the right image is really key here so in my example I would have removed all the trees because in the end result it all looks “bitty”, else you could mask that part or try using posterise to simplify the image, or even make a selection and blur the background. I think the less “clutter” in the image the better.

Note: adding a pixel layer above the merged visible layer and painting white onto it has the effect of removing the clutter i.e. the trees.

[Slotcar Bob]

Thank you firstdefence. That did the job well enough, and I got some extra knowledge out of it. I may post the colored picture after my granddaughter does it. 😂

[frereroy]

Thanks firstdefence.  In this time of "confinement" it is useful to be able to make some quick colouring pages out of old family photos for the kids.

[firstdefence]

You’re both welcome 😊

Look forward to seeing the finished art work 👀

[Alfred]

The following post from @R C-R may be of interest:

 

[firstdefence]

Made a short Macro to automate this a bit. The White paint layer is used with the brush tool set to white to erase bits you don’t want.

Colouring Page Maker.afmacro

[Slotcar Bob]

19 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Made a short Macro to automate this a bit. The White paint layer is used with the brush tool set to white to erase bits you don’t want.

Colouring Page Maker.afmacro 2 kB · 1 download

So, I downloaded and installed the other macro that was offered. Saw this one, and wanted to check it out, too. But as the graphic indicates, "import" doesn't highlight the file, even the one I previously installed. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

Note: I included the picture I wanted to edit in the first place.

[firstdefence]

Have a document open and go to the Macro Panel see image below for next step.

This will import the macro, you can run it from there, edit the settings and save to the library.

The file is a afmacro file not afmacros file the difference is there can be multiple macros in the afmacros file and is imported from the library panel.

there is actually only one macro in this file but there could be several it’s just Im tight lol! Dex Macros.afmacros

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

there is actually only one macro in this file but there could be several it’s just Im tight lol! Dex Macros.afmacros

No you’re not, Dex! You’re thinking of those of us who want to import your macro into APh on iPad: the iPad version of the app only understands *.macros files, not *.macro files.