Show HN: I used OpenAI's new image API for a personalized coloring book service
88 comments
·April 25, 2025DrakeDeaton
Not sure if you're aware, but if you're interested in SEO/AEO marketing, there's very healthy monthly traffic for long-tail searches in this area. Some searches getting towards 100K per month.
Love the idea! Good luck.
mdeeks
This is a cute and simple idea!
I'd like to see what a real physical book looks like before I buy it though. Do you have real pictures of a printed one?
I think our kids would appreciate seeing the original (even if a small thumbnail) along side it. You can't always tell from these AI drawings that it was originally you and your family.
Also, it's REALLY expensive. $30 for a book that my kids will draw on in one or two nights and then never touch again is probably too much.
subpixel
It’s not cheap, but my kids treasure coloring books for a long time and probably one like this until it falls apart.
zakki
To the author, I have this idea, for each page, put a sheet of transparent plastic or something like that. So the owner will color the plastic which can be erased. But it may increase the cost anc the color may not stick to the plastic.
zeroq
This is fucking amazing!
Everyone and their mother are trying to hop on the band wagon of AI and make a half assed service just because it may sell just due to the "ai" tag attached to it - this is different!
Chapeau bas! It's simple but brilliant. It's a great example of what a good idea is - with minimal effort he made an epic product focusing not an AI, but what AI can bring to the table and executing it flawlessly. Hats off!
laborcontract
i've been doing this with my child and picture books. i take pictures of pages, convert it to a coloring book, print it, and then we color her favorite books together.
ugh123
Love it! Idea: option to print "mini books".
I have some kids that still color, and it would be great to keep something in my pocket to give them quick with a crayon or pen.
sharkjacobs
from clevercoloringbook.com:
> Please only upload photos that are in line with OpenAI's Usage Policy.
> We are not able to include any photos that do not follow their policy in the final printed book.
> Editing uploaded images or videos that contain real people under the age of 18 is not permitted.
ks2048
> "that contain real people"
It seems the loophole on this site, is the examples (by my best guess) are AI.
mdeeks
I'm not the OP, but during the recent Studio Ghiblification craze there were a huge number of photos of families and kids passing along in facebook, twitter, and other social media. It was literally everywhere you looked. OpenAI obviously saw all of that. I don't think they actually care unless it's something bordering on illegal.
ronsor
I agree. In practice OpenAI is unlikely to care about families uploading their own photos. I think the policy is mostly to stop random people from engaging in creepy activities with the photos of children.
barbazoo
For anyone looking for a prompt to do this manually, it seems to be as simple as this:
> Generate a version of this photo that can be used as a coloring sheet
darajava
Close enough! The prompt I use is:
> Make this a page in a colouring book. The drawing is in a simple Studio Ghibli portrait style. Bleed all the way to the edges. Background colour is #ffffff and lines are bold and #000000. There is no shading or crossthatching.
an0malous
The OP looks like it runs images through a Ghibli filter first
sen
Yeah I've been doing this with image-gen AIs pretty much since they started and it's a lot of fun. Even early Dall-E etc was awesome at doing stuff like "Create a colouring in sheet with some dinosaurs having a party" or generic prompts like that, and more recently giving photos to convert has been loads of fun for the kids.
thehappypm
I’ve done this a bunch with my son. It’s not quite that simple because often times it’ll create images that have too much detail, sometimes it’ll actually include colors. But yeah, it’s not really all that complicated
mmastrac
The comics look pretty Miyazaki-inspired, like all of the comics I've seen lately. I've kinda started to dislike this look because it's _everywhere_ that low-effort comics are these days.
Maybe worth trying to train a better style for this. This is probably something where you could put a little effort in up-front (ie: using a model that's for segmentation to get outlines, using some classic image-processing for boundary detection) and then have AI touch it up a little more lightly and a less of the "default" style.
Also, do you have AI images for the "real world" samples on the left? They have a certain "I don't exactly know what, but it's creeping me out" vibe.
ronsor
It doesn't look particularly Miyazaki style to me; it's just a generic cartoon style.
I think the Ghiblipocalypse has gotten people on edge.
Klonoar
It absolutely resembles the current Miyazaka-esque OpenAI image trend that’s been going on.
fouc
there's 4 sample pages, and the one with the cat is the only one that is not Ghibli-style.
Here's some generic cartoon styles to look at: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/04/ef/5f04ef77ce3beb272a61...
darajava
This is so interesting - I could add some of these as options.
throwup238
That's probably the only info-graphic I've ever seen that's worth a damn.
rafram
This has zero resemblance to Miyazaki’s style. (And I say that as someone who isn’t a fan of this idea at all.)
mmastrac
Hard disagree. Sample #2 is totally the Miyazaki-vibe that is everywhere in OpenAI-generated comics. https://clevercoloringbook.com/samples/2_cartoon.png
The cartoon owl at the top has a different vibe and would probably work for the comics as well.
xdfgh1112
It's nothing like Ghibli, you are overthinking this.
rafram
For what it’s worth (and it’s probably not much), it doesn’t cost that much to commission comic book-style art from an actual artist online. When you do that, the proceeds go to an artist, not to an AI company that stole from them and a software developer who wrote a wrapper around their API.
ipaddr
In fairness no artists are advertising a personal coloring book. The time, effort and cost would put this out of reach for 99.99 of people.
No artists are losing income because of this and no industry is being upended. This is a new product that's available because of a technology advanced.
Why the focus the artist? Everytime you order in food online you take away a tip from a host, server, bartender and take away a job from a person who answers a phone. Why focus on artists when so many have been affected by technology.
Something1234
And yet there’s plenty of adult coloring books made by a human out there if you’re willing to go to a brick and mortar shop. Got a super cool one from dick blicks, with a lot of underwater scenes. Also paper quality is important. I can’t imagine getting as far as I did in mine if it was newspaper
saretup
That’s because those are not personalized. The economy of scale allows for artists to make generic coloring book with high quality art, but it’s expensive for artists to create (and customers to buy) custom made coloring books personalized for the customers photos.
jen729w
My partner makes one! Go grab a copy if you're in Australia, the wonderful POP local -- started as POP Canberra -- sells them.
https://www.poplocal.com.au/product/bum-man-colouring-book/
He's 'Bum Man'. A man (actually it's asexual) who is a bum. I mean c'mon.
seeEllArr
The food you order online was not stolen from the server/bartender without their permission or compensation. Even if the analogy holds, this is whataboutism, and in the U.S. at least tipping is a fucked system too.
ipaddr
If you stop going into the restaurant they stop scheduling servers. You or the restaurant didn't get permission from the server who isn't working there anymore.
It's about applying your outrage evenly. Why put artists over a servers? Why do you drive when not using horses means many blacksmiths positions disappear. Technology that is accepted by society changes society. Artists will continue to evolve and create messages about those changes. No need to worry about their plight. Worry about translators or other industries that can't easily provide the same value. Artists are the one group who will survive and thrive.
ada1981
If it's not plant based it is.
calebio
Usually when you commission something you're asking the artist to do art and create something unique with their own artistic flair... not just line-trace an existing photo.
The intention and cost of something like that is not at all comparable to what is being offered here.
patch_collector
I tried to do exactly that once. I was offering between $20-$40 per image to make a few coloring pages as a mother's day gift for my wife. Not complex images either -- just basic coloring pages from photos of my wife and child, without backgrounds, for my kids to color in.
I reached out to multiple artists, and got one image back (from a good friend). I gave up on commissioning actual artists, and traced the images myself on a tablet. I imagine someone with the right knowledge of where to find artists and the willingness to wait on their schedule could have done it faster, but I'd have used this service if it had been around.
richardw
My opinion isn’t fully formed but I currently think either all content producers have a claim (potentially workable as eg a discount), or only those who contribute should get access to AI’s.
And by all I mean the AI companies owe a huge debt to all humans who wrote or designed or drew anything. The vast majority of the benefit of this technology relies on volume: the billions of pages and lines of code we wrote for other humans, but have now been repurposed. This technology relies on bulk, which was mainly unprofessional or freely given content, by those who intended it for other humans. It was not 100% built only on the output of the few who charge for their exquisite words or designs, even if their output is higher quality.
Alternatively, let the AI companies go for it but everyone who uses any kind of AI should understand that they’re standing on the shoulders of the millions of developers and nonprofessional writers whose work has now been repurposed. Not the few artists and journalists. So those artists and journalists should both refuse to contribute to, and use, AI.
* I’ve written very little of this useful content, but would be happy to pay my share to those that have built what we have. I also turn off training on my content, but I pay a lot for models. Feel free to help me think through this with comments of your own.
jstummbillig
If it does not cost that much, that is obviously because the artist is too cheap. If you find that to be a preferable equilibrium, that's a choice I guess, but I find it fairly ironic in light of the purported motivation.
thehappypm
I can get ChatGPT to do this for literally free. Even in the free tier, I can get a couple images per day.
paulcole
If this person’s service was to pay human artists $24 for a 23 page custom coloring book you’d be crying on here about them not paying human artists enough.
Almost nobody is paying $100 or more for a custom 5-page coloring book.
This service isn’t taking work from human artists.
bix6
This is a cool technological feat but what is the cost to humanity and its artists?
Some of these replies seem rather dismissive to the artists’ plight.
ipaddr
Cost is nothing because this service isn't offered currently. No income lost and might spark an interest in coloring books which grows the artist's income.
Artists have been around and existed in more repressive societies throughout time. The best art is usually produced from the greatest struggle. Artists will engage and create art in this new world. The cost of not providing a new surface for artists to explore is what kills art.
qotgalaxy
[dead]
ronsor
They're dismissive because we've had the same moral panics before with the introduction of photography, then sound recordings, and then digital art tools, and then vector art, and then 3D, and also the Internet to an extent, and...
You can see where this is going, right? In the end, humanity and even artists will be fine overall, even if the world changes.
blibble
how will artists be fine when Google can steal all their work, then use that to compete with them and ultimately replace them
for the cost of showing ads?
ks2048
Suggestions:
* one full PDF (including cover) of an example book.
* don't use AI images as examples - it's not obvious if the outline version will look as good on real images.
darajava
Thank you, I agree and I'll update the example photos.
I didn't add a PDF but I added some photos of the real end product to the bottom of the landing page now.
osigurdson
I tried copying the one of the photos into ChatGPT and asked it to make me a coloring book style image out of it. It is definitely not as good as this site (i.e. I don't think kids would recognize themselves). Good prompting!
ks2048
Can you preview the images? I uploaded one image and don't see the outline-version.
darajava
No, it's not a real-time process. We have an admin panel to generate the images, cover and PDF. There is a good bit of human input involved.
vunderba
You'll want to really drive home the niche (through your feature set) that it's for family photos, because the generic photo to AI vectorized coloring book service has been done to death.
darajava
Can you show me an example? I think before 2-3 days ago this wasn't really possible without the output images looking really bad.
I've had an idea for a long time to generate a cute coloring book based on family photos, send it to a printing service, and then deliver it to people.
Last month, when OpenAI's Sora was released for public use I (foolishly) thought I'd manually drag-and-drop each order’s photos into Sora's UI and copy the resulting images back into my system. This took way too much time (about an hour for each of the few books I made and tested with family and friends). It clearly wasn't possible to release this version because I’d be losing a huge amount of time on every order. So instead, I decided I'd finish off the project as best I could, put it "on ice," and wait for the API release.
The API is now released (quicker than I thought it'd be, too!) and I integrated it last night. I'd love your feedback on any and all aspects.
The market is mostly family-based, but from my testing of the physical book I've found that both adults and kids enjoy coloring them in (it's surprisingly cathartic and creative). If you would like to order one you can get 10% off by tapping the total price line item five times.