I Tried AI Colouring Book Services to Find the Perfect Gift. One Was a Clear Winner.
There’s something magical about giving a truly personal gift. I wanted to find something more meaningful than another plastic toy. That’s when I stumbled upon a fascinating idea: turning our favourite family photos into a custom colouring book using AI. Dozens of websites claimed to do just this, all boasting about their “advanced AI.” But as I dug deeper, I realised the reality was far more complicated. How could I tell which services were genuinely innovative and which were just basic photo filters that would leave me with a messy, uncolorable scribble?
So, I went on a mission. I systematically tested some of the most popular services to find the one that could actually turn a precious memory into a perfect, gift-ready colouring book. My criteria were simple: How good is the AI? Is it easy to use? And is the final product something I’d actually be proud to give?
Here’s what I found.
The Contenders
Crayola
You’d think Crayola, the king of colouring, would nail this. You’d be wrong. Their “Custom Colouring Page” generator is a frustrating mess. The tool is designed to work with their proprietary “Colour Wonder” paper, but as countless user reviews reveal, printing your custom page with a home printer often smears the ink and ruins the expensive, special-use markers. Their official solution involves using a hairdryer to set the ink — a clear sign of a broken process. The “AI” itself is just a basic filter. It’s a classic case of a legacy brand slapping a digital feature onto an old product without thinking it through.
ReallyColor.com
This tool’s AI felt dated. The results were often messy, requiring me to manually use “erase” and “draw” tools to clean up backgrounds and fix broken lines. It’s less of a one-click solution and more of a starting point for a DIY project.
FotoMedley.com
This platform offers a ton of options — mazes, dot-to-dots, sketches — but this variety comes at the cost of quality. Its AI struggles with complex photos, producing cluttered, overly-detailed pages that are more frustrating than fun to colour.
PortraitArt.app
This was, by far, the best digital-only option. PortraitArt.app uses a powerful AI that creates genuinely artistic and high-quality colouring pages that capture a person’s likeness remarkably well. The interface is clean, and the process is simple.
But here’s the huge catch: it changes the content of the original photo!
Suddenly, the most important part of the process was back on my shoulders. I was now responsible for figuring out how to print it. What kind of paper should I use? Will the ink bleed? Should I use a third-party service like Walmart or Shutterfly? The convenience of the AI was immediately undermined by the inconvenience of production.
Everfold.co.uk
Finally, there’s the service that sets the benchmark for what an AI coloring book generator should be. Everfold.co.uk operates on a completely different level by focusing on a single, perfectly executed outcome: a beautiful, professionally printed and bound colouring book delivered to your door. Instead of providing a digital tool and leaving the rest to you, Everfold offers a complete, end-to-end experience.
Their AI is exceptionally clean, producing emotionally resonant line art that requires no manual cleanup. The entire process is automated and seamless: you upload photos, the AI transforms them, and a physical book arrives ready to be gifted. This model productises convenience, solving the very problems created by every other service.
Verdict: The gold standard. A premium, hassle-free service that combines superior AI with a professionally finished product.
How They Stack Up
The Clear Winner: Everfold.co.uk
After navigating a swamp of flawed and incomplete options, I finally found the one service that gets everything right: Everfold.co.uk.
Everfold was different from the very beginning. It doesn’t just sell you a digital tool; it sells a complete, premium experience. The AI is simply better. The line art it produced was clean, beautiful, and emotionally resonant. It intelligently captured the most important parts of our family photos. There was no need for manual cleanup. It just worked.