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Show HN: Creating custom coloring pages from photos. Great for parents/teachers

179 points by stevels 3y ago

Making coloring pages out of your own personal photos is a fun and creative way to engage kids (and adults!) with art. Instead of generic coloring pages, you can turn special memories into custom works of art just waiting to be filled in with color.

derwiki 3y ago
Could be neat, but I’m really dissuaded by requiring an email signup to try it out
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Use a personal domain with a default address that filters to a mailbox then use a different email address for every site you use. This plus random passwords from a password manager contains the privacy leakage, blast radius of credential loss, and keeps your mail spam free.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    Or, you know, just don’t normalize indiscriminate email collection as a filter for using a service.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      Ship sailed? Your solo rage boycott won’t change the incentive structure of the universe. Thus adblockers, black hole email addresses, etc. Using the service without providing back the value also creates incentive to avoid the dark pattern in a way that’s a stronger reinforcement than simply not using.
  - derwiki 3y ago
    I have that and do that, but it still dissuaded me from using this service. I may have a large tinfoil bat but I still have some standards.
- stevels 3y ago
  Have to send user notification in email, because the processing queue could be long.
  - cuu508 3y ago
    A progress bar on the website would do. And if the user closes a browser tab, you can cancel their job.
    - latexr 3y ago
      Or just keep a cookie to know which job to show if the user comes back. You don’t even need a cookie banner for something that simple with no personal information.
  - derwiki 3y ago
    I’m happy refreshing for results. I really don’t want to “sign up” until I know I’m happy with the results.
- askl 3y ago
  They don't validate the email, so just register with whatever@portraitart.app and let them spam themselves.
po 3y ago
IMO your FAQ needs an entry for: when you store uploaded photos, what will they be used for. Will my uploaded photos be used as training data for your AI models for example?
- afro88 3y ago
  First thing I wanted to do was upload a family photo for my son. But of course, I don't want my family photo used for anything...
  - iJohnDoe 3y ago
    Agreed. The site should automatically delete the uploaded photos after a set amount of minutes or seconds. No reason to store them.
    - stevels 3y ago
      Right now, we keep it for user to access it later. User can choose to delete the photo and all associated pictures, as explained in https://portraitart.app/help https://portraitart.app/help We do not use the data for other purpose. This is a good suggestion. We will definitely think about how to design the UI to satisfy both.
    - sverhagen 3y ago
      If you don't want a site to (possibly) store your photos, not uploading them in the first place may be your only _real_ option...
- stevels 3y ago
  Good suggestion. We do not used the data for training. We will clarify that in FAQ.
  - pimlottc 3y ago
    Don't hide it away in the FAQ, that information should be front and center during the upload process.
stevels 3y ago
Due to high demand, the processing time is higher than usual. Need to wait for your result in email notification.
sourcecodeplz 3y ago
what language / image libraries did you use to build this? thanks
- jakewins 3y ago
  I think this is just a thin wrapper around GPT-4 or similar? Parents I know have replaced colouring books by just asking GPT-4 , and the colouring pages it generates look exactly like the example outputs here.
  - stevels 3y ago
    Those coloring books are generated by text prompting. Here we let you create coloring pages from your own photos. Related but different.
    - barishnamazov 3y ago
      GPT-4 supports images as input.
gnabgib 3y ago
Feels more likely this is the opposite - the "originals" look like hallucinations.. what is the rear suspension attached to on this "bmw"[0]? Presumably it's supposed to be an R60[1]. It magically has a lot more (accurate) parts in the colouring page[2] (bigger front and back fender, seat, engine gets fins, frame changed shape, tail has license plate holder and signals, the front brake is connected to the leaver via a cable). At least these six fingered people[3] deserve each other - shame she moved her wedding ring, Inigo Montoya seeks them. [0]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_original_... [1]: https://wallup.net/1960-bmw-r60-classic-bike-motorbike/ https://wallup.net/1960-bmw-r60-classic-bike-motorbike/ [2]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_coloring_... [3]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/wedding1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/wedding1_coloring_pag...
- kazinator 3y ago
  Did you see the goose's feet? One is a wine glass stem kind of a thing, or a liquid pour; the other is a pyramid.
- stevels 3y ago
  Good catch! You are really into the details.
- YeahThisIsMe 3y ago
  The suspension is attached to the rounded bar next to it. You can find more pictures of it using Google.
- jotaen 3y ago
  The BMW R60 image appears to be CGI / 3D-rendered. If you zoom in on the original[1], you can see how the rear suspension is attached. [1]: https://www.pexels.com/photo/orange-and-black-bmw-motorcycle-before-concrete-wall-104842/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/orange-and-black-bmw-motorcycle...
newman8r 3y ago
used a fake email, but when the processing was done, it didn't work and asked me to pay for something.
- stevels 3y ago
  The tool is not perfect. Sometimes it does not fully understand the image content. Also, right now, the image is slightly watermarked, but perfectly fine for using as coloring page. And it seems personalized coloring page is very popular, we actually just decided to make the coloring pages free of watermarks, as our minor contribution to education. Will change the code to make that happen soon (in a few days).
  - newman8r 3y ago
    Sure - I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining - I think the tool could be very neat. Would be great to be able to use it easily without any email, at least for the initial trial.
isoprophlex 3y ago
Or, you can just ask openAI directly. That way only they have your holiday pictures, instead of adding a third party of unknown trustworthiness to the mix.
- mosselman 3y ago
  Any prompt I can use?
mock-possum 3y ago
> enter your email Nope
- zevv 3y ago
  Just fill in pa-contact@photofairy.ai for the address.
vidarh 3y ago
My immediate issue, as the father of a mixed son who has just witnessed him spend hours trying to represent his own appearance accurately for an art task at school: This turns black and mixed people into white-presenting caricatures of themselves. E.g. compare [1] and [2] where the hairstyles of the black people are turned into distinctly "white" hairstyles. My son's hair is closer in texture to that of the man on the right, and there's no way of getting it into the shape of the coloring-in page. I get there's no ill intent here, but even for far less ethnically ambiguous inputs this "whitewashes" hairstyles and general appearance, and once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. If my son was the age to want to use this, I'd be concerned about letting him use this, because I know he is sensitive about how he is different to his friends, etc. and this would wildly misrepresent and erase his actual appearance. [3] and [4] is another stark example. [5] and [6].... [1] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_original_1024.... [2] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_coloring_page_... [3] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_original_10... [4] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_coloring_pa... [5] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_original_... [6] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_coloring_...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hk1337 3y ago
  Honestly, when I first started reading your comment I thought you were being over sensitive but I totally get it looking at pictures 3 and 4. Even 5 and 6 completely changes the hairstyle.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I had to look for multiple examples myself before I was sure I wasn't being oversensitive. As I said, I'm sure there's no ill intent, and in a way I'm not surprised either, because as my son himself found out, if you're going to draw line art - especially with clear, thick lines like this, then accurately representing black or mixed hair without it turning into a caricature that'd be even worse is a skill. And one that is very likely underrepresented in the training set for no fault of theirs. And this is why getting diversity "right" (so not the Gemini fiasco way) is hard - you can be extremely well meaning and just not have it register until someone for whom it's personal looks at it.
kitchen_sink 3y ago
When I was just starting out I made a similar app (https://github.com/rmdocherty/buck3t https://github.com/rmdocherty/buck3t) using classic computer vision operations like k-means and Canny edge detection rather than (I assume) ML. It also lets you fill in the returned coloring page in the browser. It’s simple and works relatively well but is prone to fail on high frequency objects like foliage, where the ML approach appears to a) succeed and b) stylise (seems to cause problems). The free trial on the cloud function expired so the web app doesn’t work and the source JS code is awful but someone (maybe me) could pretty easily rewrite the cloud function into a flask server to allow local hosting.
- codingdave 3y ago
  Same here - I had a web-based system that let you do coloring pages, paint-by-number, cross-stitch patterns, etc... and it all worked in the web session. While adding an AI element does give improvements over my results. I'm not sure those improvements are worth being prompted for my email, waiting even longer for results, the results not being 100% true to the original content, and not having those results just show on-screen.
wiradikusuma 3y ago
Tangentially related, I want to make a comic strip. I have some questions for people knowledgeable in "prompt engineering": 1. What's the style name for dilbert-like comic strips? Comic? Line art? 2. How do I produce consistent characters throughout the "comic box" and episodes? 3. How do I hint the generation of the comic? E.g. I draw a stick figure of someone sitting, and it generates my character with that pose. 4. How do I "refine" some parts of the generated image. For example I like the generated character, but I want the face to look different direction.
- Zetobal 3y ago
  1. You probably won't hit 100% parity just by prompt engineering especially if you want to do your points 3-4. You would need to train a style LoRa. 2. You can use one of the many ip-adapter models but the best result would probably be a combination of ip-adapter + subject LoRa. 3. That would be a controlnet model probably sketch best results would be achieved (for poses) using open or dw pose models. 4. You would do that with inpainting or stable drag. https://stable-diffusion-art.com https://stable-diffusion-art.com is a good starting point.
- vidarh 3y ago
  > 1. What's the style name for dilbert-like comic strips? Comic? Line art? I don't think there's a clear settled name for that specific style, but I'd describe it as an American newspaper strip with low levels of detail and inspiration from "ligne claire" (Ligne claire is the style of Tintin etc. - focuses on strong, clear lines with a lot of details omitted, rarely shading very rarely hatching; e.g. hair in Ligne Claire is usually described by its borders - even messy hair is mostly hinted at by tufts sticking out, with the rest flat shaded). American newspaper strips by no means always use simple line work, so describing it as that in isolation is unlikely to work, but it has other characteristics (which are by no means universal - this is a regular complication in categorizing this), such as often omitting backgrounds, or just hinting at backgrounds (e.g. with a picture hanging on a wall being all you see of the wall), and often using panels that change little or sometimes not at all during a conversational exchange (basically strips have a lot of characteristics around streamlining works for artists on a deadline that's often a major stress factor, so lots of simplification, but what requires simplification to same the artist time will vary greatly). But there is variation there too, and especially very significant variation between the classic single-strip-a-day format and the Sunday format with a bigger panel, where you often end up seeing non-traditional layout or characters "bursting out" of individual frames in various ways where the single strips are often far more regimented. Many comics do both, and will sometimes look very different between the two. E.g. Calvin and Hobbes strips are fairly regimented, usually four panels of near uniform size, while the Sunday panels were renowned for breaking "rules" with uneven, sometimes overlapping panels, and drawings bursting out of them - the last ever Calvin and Hobbes consists of 3 or 5 or 7 frames depending on how you count - the first frame contains another frame, which contains a drawing, which contains another frame with a drawing. The two top outer frames don't even align with the bottom outer frame... [1] You almost certainly would need to try multiple things and add additional descriptors to get the specific feel you want. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31/calvin-hobbes-bill-watterson/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31...
latexr 3y ago
> #1 Photo to Art App According to whom? There’s just that sentence, surrounded by laurel leaves, above five stars. Zero indication of where that award/rating came from. Did you make it up?
- xnx 3y ago
  This one calls itself "#1 AI coloring page generator" https://colorbliss.art/ https://colorbliss.art/
  - latexr 3y ago
    So they’re both confidently making stuff up without any sources or justification. Quite on brand for the current generation of generative AI.
  - brobertson 3y ago
    oh dang, i forgot to put in my source. Thanks for calling that out - I fixed it for you! https://colorbliss.art https://colorbliss.art
preinheimer 3y ago
The coloring page that should have shown my son and daughter sitting on a bench that looked like a bear waving magic wands… turned my son into a girl with Princess Leia hair, and my daughter into a anthropomorphized bear, no wands. Fun, but it’s no longer a special memory. There’s so little tying the source and result.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DannyPage 3y ago
I really think this should have GenAI in the title on the webpage or on here, because it's taking the source photo and making best guesses while creating details out of whole cloth. This isn't just "another photo filter", it's instead taking the picture and running with it with sometimes pretty poor results. For example, I used a random selfie of me on the beach and big rocks in the water, wearing dark sunglasses and mouth closed. Watercolor: Added eyes to my glasses (!). The rocks and water turned green, and it looked like I was standing in a park. Coloring Page: Ferns and trees added that weren't there before. Both: Gave me a teethy smile when my lips were closed. The examples on the home page must have been extremely handpicked because I'm not seeing anything to that same fidelity.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  Heh, I used a photo of myself sitting on the couch with my chihuahua looking up at me over my laptop screen and it replaced her with a St Bernard. The hallucination is strong in this one.
- stephenhuey 3y ago
  When I saw this posted late last night, I was pretty excited since I have kids, but then realized it's just determining the basic idea of what it sees in the photo, and then drawing a new image from scratch that has those elements. What I wanted is something that takes the original photo and removes things from the image until we're left with some basic line drawings, so that the people in the coloring book actually look like the people in the photo! Their examples very obviously show how different the resulting image is from the original. If Google allowed you to search by saying "Find me a coloring book image where a dad is sitting behind 2 kids with his arms around them, and the daughter is on the left and the son is on the right" then we'd end up with results almost as good. I'm no Photoshop expert, but someone else in this discussion pointed out that Photoshop has some filters or other tools that do edge detection and can yield much more accurate results. If the techniques could be replicated in a SaaS then you'd have a much better product. Of course, if it could be done in a desktop Mac app or an iOS app, I might choose that for privacy reasons.
  - 3y ago
withinboredom 3y ago
Does anyone know of a site that works without the gimmicky AI? Like it always seems to switch the sides of people, changing major details, etc. I just want a coloring page of the actual image I upload, not some AI's interpretation of it with creative licensing.
- mkummer 3y ago
  You could try out our site [1] – we use an AI model but not a diffusion model (like OP is) to convert photos to line art, the resulting lines are less "smooth" but it better represents the original image [1] https://dreamandcolor.com/ https://dreamandcolor.com/
HumblyTossed 3y ago
I wonder if the backlash against "AI" will grow to be enough to keep us from hell.
- cameron_b 3y ago
  Right now we hear Libera te ... me ... Soon we'll hear libera te tutemet ex inferis
chad_strategic 3y ago
On a positive note. I have fond memories of my wife and son coloring at the dining room table during the pandemic. I look forward to trying this out.
hyperific 3y ago
For significantly less compute you could make pretty good coloring book pages just using different edge detection methods or simply using the stamp filter in Photoshop.
- mhuffman 3y ago
  I actually used this exact method in the early 2000s to make "coloring books" for local businesses using their own photographs. They would give them out and use them for marketing.
- fennecfoxy 3y ago
  I wouldn't call simple edge detection "pretty good" colouring book generation. You're just gonna get all the edges of complex shapes; it needs to be cartoonified/simplified with having large contiguous patches of colour in mind.
jwineinger 3y ago
I uploaded a picture of my dog and none of the styles looked like HER. They were just some generic dog in the same pose as mine.
taco_emoji 3y ago
Seems like a stupid use of AI
whalesalad 3y ago
I was wanting to build a tool like this to transform photos into templates for doing stained glass work. This is very cool.
_giorgio_ 3y ago
Super annoying... needs an email You lost your opportunity, you can now go back to anonimity.

179 points by stevels 3y ago

derwiki 3y ago

Could be neat, but I’m really dissuaded by requiring an email signup to try it out

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Use a personal domain with a default address that filters to a mailbox then use a different email address for every site you use. This plus random passwords from a password manager contains the privacy leakage, blast radius of credential loss, and keeps your mail spam free.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  Or, you know, just don’t normalize indiscriminate email collection as a filter for using a service.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    Ship sailed? Your solo rage boycott won’t change the incentive structure of the universe. Thus adblockers, black hole email addresses, etc. Using the service without providing back the value also creates incentive to avoid the dark pattern in a way that’s a stronger reinforcement than simply not using.
- derwiki 3y ago
  I have that and do that, but it still dissuaded me from using this service. I may have a large tinfoil bat but I still have some standards.
stevels 3y ago
Have to send user notification in email, because the processing queue could be long.
- cuu508 3y ago
  A progress bar on the website would do. And if the user closes a browser tab, you can cancel their job.
  - latexr 3y ago
    Or just keep a cookie to know which job to show if the user comes back. You don’t even need a cookie banner for something that simple with no personal information.
- derwiki 3y ago
  I’m happy refreshing for results. I really don’t want to “sign up” until I know I’m happy with the results.
askl 3y ago
They don't validate the email, so just register with whatever@portraitart.app and let them spam themselves.

po 3y ago

IMO your FAQ needs an entry for: when you store uploaded photos, what will they be used for. Will my uploaded photos be used as training data for your AI models for example?

afro88 3y ago
First thing I wanted to do was upload a family photo for my son. But of course, I don't want my family photo used for anything...
- iJohnDoe 3y ago
  Agreed. The site should automatically delete the uploaded photos after a set amount of minutes or seconds. No reason to store them.
  - stevels 3y ago
    Right now, we keep it for user to access it later. User can choose to delete the photo and all associated pictures, as explained in https://portraitart.app/help https://portraitart.app/help We do not use the data for other purpose. This is a good suggestion. We will definitely think about how to design the UI to satisfy both.
  - sverhagen 3y ago
    If you don't want a site to (possibly) store your photos, not uploading them in the first place may be your only _real_ option...
stevels 3y ago
Good suggestion. We do not used the data for training. We will clarify that in FAQ.
- pimlottc 3y ago
  Don't hide it away in the FAQ, that information should be front and center during the upload process.

stevels 3y ago

Due to high demand, the processing time is higher than usual. Need to wait for your result in email notification.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago

what language / image libraries did you use to build this? thanks

jakewins 3y ago
I think this is just a thin wrapper around GPT-4 or similar? Parents I know have replaced colouring books by just asking GPT-4 , and the colouring pages it generates look exactly like the example outputs here.
- stevels 3y ago
  Those coloring books are generated by text prompting. Here we let you create coloring pages from your own photos. Related but different.
  - barishnamazov 3y ago
    GPT-4 supports images as input.

gnabgib 3y ago

Feels more likely this is the opposite - the "originals" look like hallucinations.. what is the rear suspension attached to on this "bmw"[0]? Presumably it's supposed to be an R60[1]. It magically has a lot more (accurate) parts in the colouring page[2] (bigger front and back fender, seat, engine gets fins, frame changed shape, tail has license plate holder and signals, the front brake is connected to the leaver via a cable). At least these six fingered people[3] deserve each other - shame she moved her wedding ring, Inigo Montoya seeks them. [0]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_original_... [1]: https://wallup.net/1960-bmw-r60-classic-bike-motorbike/ https://wallup.net/1960-bmw-r60-classic-bike-motorbike/ [2]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/motorcycle1_coloring_... [3]: https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/wedding1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/wedding1_coloring_pag...

kazinator 3y ago
Did you see the goose's feet? One is a wine glass stem kind of a thing, or a liquid pour; the other is a pyramid.
stevels 3y ago
Good catch! You are really into the details.
YeahThisIsMe 3y ago
The suspension is attached to the rounded bar next to it. You can find more pictures of it using Google.
jotaen 3y ago
The BMW R60 image appears to be CGI / 3D-rendered. If you zoom in on the original[1], you can see how the rear suspension is attached. [1]: https://www.pexels.com/photo/orange-and-black-bmw-motorcycle-before-concrete-wall-104842/ https://www.pexels.com/photo/orange-and-black-bmw-motorcycle...

newman8r 3y ago

used a fake email, but when the processing was done, it didn't work and asked me to pay for something.

stevels 3y ago
The tool is not perfect. Sometimes it does not fully understand the image content. Also, right now, the image is slightly watermarked, but perfectly fine for using as coloring page. And it seems personalized coloring page is very popular, we actually just decided to make the coloring pages free of watermarks, as our minor contribution to education. Will change the code to make that happen soon (in a few days).
- newman8r 3y ago
  Sure - I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining - I think the tool could be very neat. Would be great to be able to use it easily without any email, at least for the initial trial.

isoprophlex 3y ago

Or, you can just ask openAI directly. That way only they have your holiday pictures, instead of adding a third party of unknown trustworthiness to the mix.

mosselman 3y ago
Any prompt I can use?

mock-possum 3y ago

> enter your email Nope

zevv 3y ago
Just fill in pa-contact@photofairy.ai for the address.

vidarh 3y ago

My immediate issue, as the father of a mixed son who has just witnessed him spend hours trying to represent his own appearance accurately for an art task at school: This turns black and mixed people into white-presenting caricatures of themselves. E.g. compare [1] and [2] where the hairstyles of the black people are turned into distinctly "white" hairstyles. My son's hair is closer in texture to that of the man on the right, and there's no way of getting it into the shape of the coloring-in page. I get there's no ill intent here, but even for far less ethnically ambiguous inputs this "whitewashes" hairstyles and general appearance, and once I saw it I couldn't unsee it. If my son was the age to want to use this, I'd be concerned about letting him use this, because I know he is sensitive about how he is different to his friends, etc. and this would wildly misrepresent and erase his actual appearance. [3] and [4] is another stark example. [5] and [6].... [1] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_original_1024.... [2] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/group1_coloring_page_... [3] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_original_10... [4] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/portrait4_coloring_pa... [5] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_original_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_original_... [6] https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_coloring_page_1024.jpeg https://portraitart.app/static/gallery/basketball2_coloring_...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hk1337 3y ago
Honestly, when I first started reading your comment I thought you were being over sensitive but I totally get it looking at pictures 3 and 4. Even 5 and 6 completely changes the hairstyle.
- vidarh 3y ago
  I had to look for multiple examples myself before I was sure I wasn't being oversensitive. As I said, I'm sure there's no ill intent, and in a way I'm not surprised either, because as my son himself found out, if you're going to draw line art - especially with clear, thick lines like this, then accurately representing black or mixed hair without it turning into a caricature that'd be even worse is a skill. And one that is very likely underrepresented in the training set for no fault of theirs. And this is why getting diversity "right" (so not the Gemini fiasco way) is hard - you can be extremely well meaning and just not have it register until someone for whom it's personal looks at it.

kitchen_sink 3y ago

When I was just starting out I made a similar app (https://github.com/rmdocherty/buck3t https://github.com/rmdocherty/buck3t) using classic computer vision operations like k-means and Canny edge detection rather than (I assume) ML. It also lets you fill in the returned coloring page in the browser. It’s simple and works relatively well but is prone to fail on high frequency objects like foliage, where the ML approach appears to a) succeed and b) stylise (seems to cause problems). The free trial on the cloud function expired so the web app doesn’t work and the source JS code is awful but someone (maybe me) could pretty easily rewrite the cloud function into a flask server to allow local hosting.

codingdave 3y ago
Same here - I had a web-based system that let you do coloring pages, paint-by-number, cross-stitch patterns, etc... and it all worked in the web session. While adding an AI element does give improvements over my results. I'm not sure those improvements are worth being prompted for my email, waiting even longer for results, the results not being 100% true to the original content, and not having those results just show on-screen.

wiradikusuma 3y ago

Tangentially related, I want to make a comic strip. I have some questions for people knowledgeable in "prompt engineering": 1. What's the style name for dilbert-like comic strips? Comic? Line art? 2. How do I produce consistent characters throughout the "comic box" and episodes? 3. How do I hint the generation of the comic? E.g. I draw a stick figure of someone sitting, and it generates my character with that pose. 4. How do I "refine" some parts of the generated image. For example I like the generated character, but I want the face to look different direction.

Zetobal 3y ago
1. You probably won't hit 100% parity just by prompt engineering especially if you want to do your points 3-4. You would need to train a style LoRa. 2. You can use one of the many ip-adapter models but the best result would probably be a combination of ip-adapter + subject LoRa. 3. That would be a controlnet model probably sketch best results would be achieved (for poses) using open or dw pose models. 4. You would do that with inpainting or stable drag. https://stable-diffusion-art.com https://stable-diffusion-art.com is a good starting point.
vidarh 3y ago
> 1. What's the style name for dilbert-like comic strips? Comic? Line art? I don't think there's a clear settled name for that specific style, but I'd describe it as an American newspaper strip with low levels of detail and inspiration from "ligne claire" (Ligne claire is the style of Tintin etc. - focuses on strong, clear lines with a lot of details omitted, rarely shading very rarely hatching; e.g. hair in Ligne Claire is usually described by its borders - even messy hair is mostly hinted at by tufts sticking out, with the rest flat shaded). American newspaper strips by no means always use simple line work, so describing it as that in isolation is unlikely to work, but it has other characteristics (which are by no means universal - this is a regular complication in categorizing this), such as often omitting backgrounds, or just hinting at backgrounds (e.g. with a picture hanging on a wall being all you see of the wall), and often using panels that change little or sometimes not at all during a conversational exchange (basically strips have a lot of characteristics around streamlining works for artists on a deadline that's often a major stress factor, so lots of simplification, but what requires simplification to same the artist time will vary greatly). But there is variation there too, and especially very significant variation between the classic single-strip-a-day format and the Sunday format with a bigger panel, where you often end up seeing non-traditional layout or characters "bursting out" of individual frames in various ways where the single strips are often far more regimented. Many comics do both, and will sometimes look very different between the two. E.g. Calvin and Hobbes strips are fairly regimented, usually four panels of near uniform size, while the Sunday panels were renowned for breaking "rules" with uneven, sometimes overlapping panels, and drawings bursting out of them - the last ever Calvin and Hobbes consists of 3 or 5 or 7 frames depending on how you count - the first frame contains another frame, which contains a drawing, which contains another frame with a drawing. The two top outer frames don't even align with the bottom outer frame... [1] You almost certainly would need to try multiple things and add additional descriptors to get the specific feel you want. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31/calvin-hobbes-bill-watterson/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/12/31...

latexr 3y ago

> #1 Photo to Art App According to whom? There’s just that sentence, surrounded by laurel leaves, above five stars. Zero indication of where that award/rating came from. Did you make it up?

xnx 3y ago
This one calls itself "#1 AI coloring page generator" https://colorbliss.art/ https://colorbliss.art/
- latexr 3y ago
  So they’re both confidently making stuff up without any sources or justification. Quite on brand for the current generation of generative AI.
- brobertson 3y ago
  oh dang, i forgot to put in my source. Thanks for calling that out - I fixed it for you! https://colorbliss.art https://colorbliss.art

preinheimer 3y ago

The coloring page that should have shown my son and daughter sitting on a bench that looked like a bear waving magic wands… turned my son into a girl with Princess Leia hair, and my daughter into a anthropomorphized bear, no wands. Fun, but it’s no longer a special memory. There’s so little tying the source and result.

deleted 3y ago
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DannyPage 3y ago

I really think this should have GenAI in the title on the webpage or on here, because it's taking the source photo and making best guesses while creating details out of whole cloth. This isn't just "another photo filter", it's instead taking the picture and running with it with sometimes pretty poor results. For example, I used a random selfie of me on the beach and big rocks in the water, wearing dark sunglasses and mouth closed. Watercolor: Added eyes to my glasses (!). The rocks and water turned green, and it looked like I was standing in a park. Coloring Page: Ferns and trees added that weren't there before. Both: Gave me a teethy smile when my lips were closed. The examples on the home page must have been extremely handpicked because I'm not seeing anything to that same fidelity.

tonyarkles 3y ago
Heh, I used a photo of myself sitting on the couch with my chihuahua looking up at me over my laptop screen and it replaced her with a St Bernard. The hallucination is strong in this one.
stephenhuey 3y ago
When I saw this posted late last night, I was pretty excited since I have kids, but then realized it's just determining the basic idea of what it sees in the photo, and then drawing a new image from scratch that has those elements. What I wanted is something that takes the original photo and removes things from the image until we're left with some basic line drawings, so that the people in the coloring book actually look like the people in the photo! Their examples very obviously show how different the resulting image is from the original. If Google allowed you to search by saying "Find me a coloring book image where a dad is sitting behind 2 kids with his arms around them, and the daughter is on the left and the son is on the right" then we'd end up with results almost as good. I'm no Photoshop expert, but someone else in this discussion pointed out that Photoshop has some filters or other tools that do edge detection and can yield much more accurate results. If the techniques could be replicated in a SaaS then you'd have a much better product. Of course, if it could be done in a desktop Mac app or an iOS app, I might choose that for privacy reasons.
- 3y ago

withinboredom 3y ago

Does anyone know of a site that works without the gimmicky AI? Like it always seems to switch the sides of people, changing major details, etc. I just want a coloring page of the actual image I upload, not some AI's interpretation of it with creative licensing.

mkummer 3y ago
You could try out our site [1] – we use an AI model but not a diffusion model (like OP is) to convert photos to line art, the resulting lines are less "smooth" but it better represents the original image [1] https://dreamandcolor.com/ https://dreamandcolor.com/

HumblyTossed 3y ago

I wonder if the backlash against "AI" will grow to be enough to keep us from hell.

cameron_b 3y ago
Right now we hear Libera te ... me ... Soon we'll hear libera te tutemet ex inferis

chad_strategic 3y ago

On a positive note. I have fond memories of my wife and son coloring at the dining room table during the pandemic. I look forward to trying this out.

hyperific 3y ago

For significantly less compute you could make pretty good coloring book pages just using different edge detection methods or simply using the stamp filter in Photoshop.

mhuffman 3y ago
I actually used this exact method in the early 2000s to make "coloring books" for local businesses using their own photographs. They would give them out and use them for marketing.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
I wouldn't call simple edge detection "pretty good" colouring book generation. You're just gonna get all the edges of complex shapes; it needs to be cartoonified/simplified with having large contiguous patches of colour in mind.

jwineinger 3y ago

I uploaded a picture of my dog and none of the styles looked like HER. They were just some generic dog in the same pose as mine.

taco_emoji 3y ago

Seems like a stupid use of AI

whalesalad 3y ago

I was wanting to build a tool like this to transform photos into templates for doing stained glass work. This is very cool.

_giorgio_ 3y ago

Super annoying... needs an email You lost your opportunity, you can now go back to anonimity.