Here is a much better one for a fraction of the cost:
http://www.kidware.net

it converts any image to a coloring page. There is a $20 version and a $35 version. I downloaded the trial version of this one and the one in this site. the kidware.net one is cheaper and superior.

Waste of time downloading when paint or paint.NET can do the same thing and is easier to understand and use.

Verdict: Waste of time

Hi,

I attempted for three hours last nigh to download this program and alas, it did not work. Was your sit down? I tried at several times during the day. rally need this for my children and cannot afford it so am saddened to see you post it here yet say it s available when it was clearly ot - unless yo hav a good explanation. I do hope you do. My little ones (and I to be honest) are exceedingly disappointed!

Thank you!
S

Albeit nearly 30 yrs ago now, I was once involved with undergraduate AI research. I was studying AI from the standpoint of a cognitive psychologist, attempting to understand and gleam insight into the epistemological complexities of the human mind, by using computers in attempts to mimic human behaviour and learning. Image recognition (often referred to as pattern recognition) is a classic example of the unrivalled supremacy of the 'human computer'. When making sense of a scene, our raw data is found in the excitation of retinal cells, whilst the computer has pixels to use as a similar basis. However, when we observe a complex scene, INSTANTANEOUSLY the raw data is grouped, so that the objects in the scene are understandable to us. The most advanced of artificial intelligence computer programs, would require a very long time to even come close to what we take for granted, and achieve in an instant.

This explains why the line drawing results are so much better, when a cartoon image is created from a 3D object, rather than a 2D image. When making accurate line drawings from 2D images, most of the hard work and complexity involves intelligent recognition of which pixels belong to surfaces, and which surfaces are to be grouped as component parts of an object.

Image recognition The identification of objects in an image. This process would probably start with image processing techniques such as noise removal, followed by (low-level) feature extraction to locate lines, regions and possibly areas with certain textures. The clever bit is to interpret collections of these shapes as single objects, e.g. cars on a road, boxes on a conveyor belt or cancerous cells on a microscope slide. One reason this is an AI problem is that an object can appear very different when viewed from different angles or under different lighting. Another problem is deciding what features belong to what object and which are background or shadows etc. The human visual system performs these tasks mostly unconsciously but a computer requires skilful programming and lots of processing power to approach human performance. (1997-07-20). Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing.

For crying out loud, how come the company still exists?

Fortunately, the company's titles are given away free. I wonder what kind of revenue has the company earned from those crappy software.

With regards to the above, I have tried the software and found it to me relatively simple to use. It is a scaled down interface of whatever Photoshop/GIMP/Photofiltre/Paint.Net has to offer.

If you want a fuss-free colouring book creator, this works. But it can still be done in the programmes above, albeit a bit more troublesome..

must add this note
I restarted the program--trying to preview another image
and it will not show large view of updated image
all it will show is the image that was there when I closed the program
this is strange

will probably uninstall now

With 8 grand kids I am going to love this program
Played with it for a little bit
It is going to be great for the little ones to color
their own images

the only downfall I see is the quality of the images is not to great
I can do this on photoshop-but this is fun also

thanks GAOTD

I downloaded and installed this software. When I tried to execute it, A-Squared flagged it as a back-door, "Code Injector". Don't know if A-Squared is too sensitive or not; not worth the risk...

When i tryied to install, i tog this error "Fatal Error: Key is invalid" Please Help!

It works great to create coloring book pages out of porno pics. THANKS GOTD !

Hey I thought it was great. Quick simple download, just a quick copy paste to register.
Free so what more do you want.
Some people will complain about anything.

Din't like it had to uninstall it. I run windows XP and a HP Color laserprinter. Started spitting out a bunch of papers with codes. then crashed.

Unfortunately KCBC did not work rather well. The problem is that it's only applying a contrast filter, that makes the lighter tones white and the darker tones black.

What's really needed is a combination of solarization and edge detection to really make this work right. That way large areas of dark will be solarized to white and outlined instead of being big chunky blocks of black that can't be colored.

KCBC turned my daughter's brown hair into a black blob, which doesn't really offer much interest. Also the program keeps popping up a reminder on my Vista machine that I may need to run as Administrator to get it to work (I don't) but I keep seeing the darn warning every time I preview an image.

Deleted

Installed this little horror and thought it was some sort of weird junkware joke.
A2 Malware also bought up an alarm during installation which I possibly foolishly ignored.
I feel I should invoice these dorkmeisters for wasting my valuable time.
Disclaimer: Comments not aimed at FOTD.

I agree with #49. Befunky is a better online conversion software than installing this GAOTD software to your pc.

http://www.befunky.com/befunky_cartoonizer.php

Fubar(#82): What's up with the temper tantrum? I realize you have your little group of followers, as does anyone whose life is so empty and sad that they spend every waking moment here trying to impress others with their dubious know-how. That doesn't give you the right to insult people who want to use this site as it was meant to be used (and not to make themselves feel important). Rinse the sand out of your slit, fella. Some people may actually enjoy this program.

This is a waste of time. It's more annoying than effective. Load some images, slide the sliders, and click the button. Then click OK several times, and MAYBE you get to preview an image. There's no aspect correction in the preview. Altogether, this is poorly executed. Whoever designed it still lives in the '90s. Click OK EVERY time you have to do something as it reminds you that you might need to be Administrator if you're using Vista. Ok, I can see a reminder once, but not EVERY TIME! Just create the damn pictures.
And it would be ideal if you adjust the sliders, and the previews adjusted automatically. Instead, each image has to be processed, then move sliders, delete the image, test, repeat until image looks good. Then start another image. At that rate, it'll take all day to do 20 images.
Needs serious work. I wouldn't take this if you paid me. I can't see how they make $50.

it did allow to copy and paste key code

You don't get a live preview so you have to adjust the sliders, then click on the "create coloring book picture". Then you get a dialog box saying that if you're running this on Windows Vista you may need to run it as Administrator. Even when you're running XP. Why not tell us how to run the software in Windows 98 or Ubuntu or any of the other operating systems that the software isn't installed on. It's not that hard to check and see which operating system a user is running - there's no reason to display irrelevant dialog boxes. And, It does it EVERY time you create a picture, which you will end up doing several times, since there is no live preview. This was a neat idea for something quick and dirty if you want to make some coloring books for your kids, but it just doesn't work well and the interface decisions are very poor.

Honestly, why do so many people complain about what the price is from the developer? It's free here folks. You don't like the price, go develop it yourselves and sell it for less.

This installed on XP SP2 with no problems and did a nice job on the photos I tested. It is small, quick and easy to use.

Some Notes:
1) You will get some rather large files if you just do the View Big image, so be sure to save the coloring book.
2) It takes the approach of 'one-time use' so you add as many photos as you want and create the book. There is no way to edit an existing book and, if you created a 'theme' book, you will need to keep those photos around to recreate the base book plus any images you wanted to add.

Biggest wish: There should be a way to retrieve the created books from the menu.

Now, for me, this is quite handy. I can take a picture that my (or any) child is very familiar with and strip out the color so they can color it to their liking. I don't know how many of you have small children, but mine loves to color.

WHAT FUN!! Had no trouble installing software. THANK-YOU GATD

I always love checking GAOTD on Sundays to see what kind of ridiculous prices people put on their software, and today's download has impressed me. Not only is it a crappy version of something that pretty much any image manipulation program (even free ones!) can do, but for $50? I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything because I would've spit it all over my laptop when I saw that price. I wonder if the creator has made any money on this, and I feel sorry for anyone who paid for it.

I downloaded it and used the copy function to register it just fine. However, the program is not so fine, I have 3 graphics programs that will do a better job by using filters.. This was sketchy and even after fiddling with the adjustments, I still got poor results. Uninstall worked well. I was hoping that this program would do a much better job since that is all it does for the suggested price. What a rip-off to anyone who actually purchases/purchased this.

$49.95??? Oh my god, this must be a joke! Come on, it's only a very-very simple filter, and for example Photoshop Elements costs roughly $100 and is worth a thousand times more than THIS.

Not speaking of any free alternatives.

I wanted to like this, I really did. I was willing to accept that the images would not be coloring book perfect and they were not. However,
there were more shortcomings than I was prepared to deal with.

First off, a popup window appeared every time I tried to process an image warning that Vista users may need to run the application in Administrator mode. Getting that message once upon starting the program, I could see. Even better would be a checkbox option to not warn about that anymore. But, no. Users are forced to respond OK every time they try to convert an image.

I was forced into responding upon closing the program also. They asked for a name and email address. I tried to click out of it and was met with a window informing me that I had to enter something and if I really didn't want to give them my name and email address, I could put "None" and "none@none.com". I don't know whether this is just sloppy coding or there is a beneficial point, but it is very irritating.

Between all of that and the very poor image quality, I have now uninstalled the program. (As a note, the uninstaller left 16 items behind.)Even if the image quality of the colouring pages had been superior, I would probably not have stuck with the program as a result of the invasive, annoying quirks.

Worthless. Does a very poor job of converting images into line art. Results look nothing like a coloring bok page. Total crap. Don't waste your time.

But thanks GAOTD I'll wait for the next offer.

what we are talking about ?
every free graphic application has tons of features but here you have only one of them !!
How the developer can pretend to sell this staff even the idea is childish !!

Standards must be getting lower for free software. Terrible installation.. longest path names I've ever seen, multiple windows opening.. and lengthy for a simple .exe.
After installed, this software basically does one photo effect, that you can find in any basic free photo editor, such as Irfanview.
Coloring book software? Not even close. It's a poor effect in what it does.

ok duhhhh i got it now..lol..sorry its sunday..lol...a lil slow!

I'm always thankful for the chance to try out these programs for free. I hope the publishers make use of our reviews to upgrade the products or in making new software.

I'm really not impressed with this program. It's basically a waste of hard-drive space. The quality of the end pictures is poor, and they don't really look like colouring book pages.
GrloftheCity was right "It merely applies a sketch-like filter to it [the image], which is available in almost every graphic program. (Like GIMP, which is always free.)"
It's too bad it wasn't better done, because I could have a lot of fun with a quality program that does what this one is supposed to do.

Have installed it, but the program crashes when I try to run it with an Access violation error

#72 Terry

Sometimes there is no serial number to record. If you get the pop up that says "activation successful" you should be all set on most downloads.
Always check the read me file though on each software download to see if they have alternate instructions.

My 3 year old will enjoy her "all about me" and "all about my vacation" etc coloring books. Fine little program for those of us with kiddies.

Nice little program; HOWEVER, as a system admin, I'm concerned that a user-level app requires "administrator" privlidges. You may have a non-privlidged account for the kids and you do't want them knowing a password to get into stuff they shouldn't.

As to the manditory newsletter sign-up upon exiting - READ THE FRIENDLY INSTRUCTIONS (RTFI)! It says if you don't want to sign-up, enter "None" and "none@none.com".

It squishes the picture to fit a square. Unless I'm missing some setting that changes that. I think I will uninstall.

Downloaded this for my kid, and the results were not too bad. I was skeptical, but after trying it out, it seems that it gives pretty decent images for my boy to color in afterwards. It's perfect for long afternoons. Yes, other programs can do this as well, but I have installed this on his computer, and now he can do it himself.

longest name for a software ever, good software though.

Same negative comments as other users. Poor conversion. Uninstalled.

I tried it out, and it is a creative and fun idea, but the execution isn't the greatest. It did give me a good gift idea, however, using Photoshop and filters which does the same thing with better results.

Try Kodak Easyshare. It has the same feature.

#72, #68, and others. After install, there should have been an additional window pop up with the registration info and serial number in it, HOWEVER, that info is also in the accompanying readme.txt file that came with the download. For those of you who cannot get the serial number to work by pasting it, check what you have entered in the User Name field - that can also be the problem.

Not impresed at all. I was able to copy and paste the activation though.

The 'coloring page' came out awful even when I left it at their default suggested/recommended settings.

I would not recommend this at all. I was also annoyed by the constant reminder to run in admin mode if I have Vista. Well I don't so it is quite annoying.

I can do a better coloring page with my current graphics program.
The email sign up at the closing was a pain too. I will not be keeping this one.

- Heidi

"Simply choose any files you want converted into coloring book format from your harddrive..."

Nice theory, but unless you choose images that came from a coloring book in the first place, you're out of luck. Images with any degree of shading or complexity will not make for a "cool coloring book". The images from Andrea (#53) are great examples. This is just another instance of some D-list "developer" trying to sugar-coat something that already exists and make a quick, undeserved buck. This is nothing more than the "sketch" effects that can be had for free in programs like Gimp or Paint.net.
Granted, little kids will enjoy coloring just about anything if you give them crayons, but you might as well just buy them a real coloring book. And the fifty dollar asking price for this travesty should be illegal.
Oh, and Phil(#50): Your daily ill-conceived attempts at wit and sarcasm are annoying enough, but your take on the military today is pathetic and insulting even by your standards. You clearly know as little about our brave Armed Forces as you do about software and computers. Stick to the bad poetry, kid.

Serial number is in "readme.txt" file. Very easy to copy and paste into program. You just have to add "Giveawayoftheday" in the name box.

Stop yer complaining, please.

Mine installed fine on Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3. It opened fine and when I went to shut it down it asked for my name and email address as previously stated. However it did state that if you didn't want to give them your name and address that you should put "none" as a name and "none@none.com" as an address. Haven't had a chance to play with the program yet. I'm on my way out the door to help a friend. Hopefully later tonight I can.

This is not a screensaver, and for that, I thank you.
(and it's kinda neat too )

Installed okay...played around with settings, but no matter what, could not output a decent "colouring book" image. At times, the output was downright creepy (I'm talking "nightmares for the kiddies" creepy). As if this wasn't bad enough, it pops up a screen for you to input your name, email, etc. WHICH YOU CAN'T CLICK AWAY! Had to go into task manager and kill it. Needless to say, it's gone from my system.
Oh...also...my wife tells me that she has filters in her Photoshop that does the same thing as this software.

Most of today's so-called reviews are crap. Do any of you even remember what a coloring book looks like? How do you color an image that's 50% black? Why would you use ridiculously overpriced, crappy software to make something your kids can color?

I have to agree with #37, Pandora. Use Paint.NET. Select Adjustments, Black and White. In addition to Effects, Artistic, Ink Sketch and Pencil Sketch, you can use Effects, Stylize, Outline. Each of these only has two sliders--how hard is that? You can easily produce images that actually look like coloring book outlines, unlike most of the examples people have produced with Coloring Book Creator.

I'm not impressed with this offering. I downloaded & installed no problems but for creating a coloring book from photo files the outlining is not very good if you're planning on printing it for kids.

I would have been really pissed if I had paid $50. Most of my graphics programs offer much the same.

Thanks for the offering though, I love this site!

Okay, if you haven't figured this out yet, it's only going to work well with simple images, such as the spongebob example above. Which is okay because you're making coloring book style pages which are for kids. Basically this is just a filtering package that turns the image to stark black and white and emphasizing edges. Nice, but NO WAY is this worth $50! They should charge no more than $15 at best for something like this.