When Good Coloring Pages go Bad

So you got the coloring book installed, and everything was looking great, then you added some of your own coloring pages - and they just don't look right!

Example #1

Watch the animation below.  The initial coloring pages look pretty similar, but look at what happens as the one on the left is colored.  Little grey blotches appear, and the more we color the worse it gets!

ani-not-black-and-white

Look familiar?  If weird little grey blotches appear as you color in, it's because you haven't converted your picture to pure black-and-white.

Example #2

not-black-and-white

Have a look at the image to the right. It's not as extreme as the example above, but the left side isn't coloring properly. It should look like the one on the right.

So what's the difference?

The coloring page looked okay, but it's not pure black-and-white. There are very light shades of grey (anti-aliasing) near the black outlines. You can't see the difference, but My Coloring Book can. It thinks you've already colored those areas with a light grey, so the paint won't go there.

Fixing It

Making your coloring pages work is actually really easy. There's a free tool for Windows, plus instructions for how to do it with Photoshop, GIMP, or even Windows Paint.

You can find details and links in the Creating Coloring Pages article.