WATCH THE CONTROLLED TEST

Coloring Page Maker: Color or Grayscale Input?

Keep the color original until you compare the trace. This narrated experiment isolates one equal-brightness color boundary using this site's current algorithm.

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Transcript

Should you turn a photo black and white before using a coloring page maker? For this site, try the color original first. Removing color can remove boundary information that the tracer can use.

We tested the current public tracing function with two controlled inputs. The red half is RGB 255, zero, zero. The green half is zero, 130, zero. Both round to 76 in the code's brightness calculation. The grayscale copy is uniformly 76.

With Clean Outline, the color input produced 476 dark pixels in the measured center strip. The grayscale copy produced zero. This isolates a color boundary. It is not a test of photographs, the upload interface, or printed output.

The tool checks color channel changes as well as brightness changes. Keep the original, compare the same crop and line style, and choose the easier outline. A color input does not guarantee every contour will survive. Read the full method and limitations in the guide.