Make a paint-by-numbers from your photo

1. Pick a picture with big, simple areas: a landscape, a pet, a vase of flowers. Faces and fine textures turn into lots of tiny shapes.
2. Set the number of colours. Six to ten is quick and relaxing; fifteen or more looks closer to the photo but means more paint to mix.
3. Raise Smallest area until every area is big enough to paint and to hold its number. Large suits children.
4. Check the Colour guide tab, then print the outline and the guide, or download them.

How it works

The picture is shrunk to 240–440 pixels, depending on Detail, and converted to CIELAB colour, where equal distances look about equally different. k-means clustering, started with k-means++, picks the colours. A majority filter tidies stray pixels, and areas that are too small or too thin join a neighbour. Each number sits at the spot furthest from its area's edges, and big areas get extra numbers. Borders are traced once and shared, so the outline and the colour guide line up exactly.

Matching paints

The key lists every colour's hex code. Copy colour list puts the codes on your clipboard for a paint shop's colour matcher. Printers and screens show colours differently, so treat the printed guide as a guide.