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You are here: Home / Create / Tutorials and Tips / How to Take Better Pictures of Your Coloring

How to Take Better Pictures of Your Coloring

June 4, 2016 By Liz Masoner and Sue Chastain

Getting Good Photos of Your Coloring Pages

Tips to get better pictures of your coloring

Tips to get Great Pictures of your Coloring

I’ve asked my photographer and author friend Liz Masoner to write up some tips on how to get better pictures of your coloring pages. I’ve also added some of my own comments and tips from my own experience of taking photos of my colored pages. -Sue

You’ve spent hours picking out just the right pencils and markers, carefully picked colors, and then poured every ounce of creativity into coloring the design, now what? Taking a photo and sharing the finished page online is a pretty common step. What easier way is there to show off your hobby?

Getting a great photo that really does justice to your coloring is another matter. It really isn’t hard but you do have to know a few tricks. Every photo in this tutorial is taken with an iPhone because cell phones are what most folks use for social media sharing.

Pick the Right Light

The biggest step to getting a good photo of your coloring pages is picking the right light. This means avoiding artificial lighting, including your phone’s flash. Most house lighting is going to create a yellowish cast to your photos, especially when using a cell phone. Very few cell phones can accurately handle the color temperature of artificial lighting (be it incandescent or fluorescent).

Getting Better Pictures of Your Coloring - Lighting Example

Using a natural light source, such as from a window, will bring out the colors in your pictures the best. While it’s tempting to want to snap a picture and show off your coloring right away, waiting until morning light will give you a much better picture. [Colored by Sue Chastain from OrnaMENTALs Splendid Symmetry. Photo by Liz Masoner.]

As you can see in this example, the inset image (on the left) color is washed out, slightly yellow, and has an odd shadow in the bottom left. The right side of the image has good depth of color and clarity along with more even light. The inset was photographed under a normal house light and the shadow is from holding the phone over the image and blocking part of the light. Even though it was not directly under the light, house lighting can still easily throw shadows. The right side of the image was photographed next to a window at a time of day when the light was not casting shadows (diffused light).

Photographing your coloring pages next to a window where the light is natural and even is a great way to improve your photographs. If the sun is shining brightly, place a thin white curtain over the window to diffuse the light and avoid harsh shadows.

Photographing your coloring pages under natural light will also result in lower noise in your cell phone photos than under artificial light that is usually much dimmer.

Hold the Camera Parallel to the Page

The next big thing you can do to improve your photos is hold your camera parallel to the page. In other words, hold it directly over the page without angle. This reduces distortion and helps keep straight lines straight. You won’t always get this perfect, but the closer you get, the better the photos will turn out.

From Sue: If you can’t get your angle just right, SnapSeed is a mobile photo editing app with a transform adjustment that will help you correct the horizontal and vertical perspective angle to straighten your picture after you’ve taken it. I’ve included links further down in this article.

Or, Try a Different Angle (from Sue)

From Sue: I also find that if I can’t avoid getting a camera shadow when taking the picture from above, I can get good results taking the photo as a close up with an exaggerated angle.

Getting Good Pictures of Your Coloring - Change the Point of View

If you find it impossible to get a good angle without casting a camera shadow, try taking an extreme close-up, focusing on just a portion of the coloring page. [Colored by Sue Chastain from the March eNews subscriber freebie.]

This is also a good trick for concealing a mistake you don’t want to show in a part of your picture–just leave it out of frame! This trick, plus a subtle “tilt shift” blur effect is my secret to getting “wow” factor pictures.

Picking the Focal Point

Your phone won’t always do a good job understanding what amount of light is in the area. Even if you have your phone held perfectly parallel to the page, the camera might focus on one of the white areas instead of the colored areas. If this happens, the phone will adjust the light for bright white paper and you will wind up with a dark image that doesn’t show the nuances of your shading.

Getting Better Pictures of Your Coloring - Focus

Tell your phone camera where to focus by tapping the screen. Focusing on the coloring instead of the white area of the page will improve the brightness in your picture. [Colored by Sue Chastain from MiniMENTALs On-the-Go Coloring Book. Photo by Liz Masoner]

This can be seen in the split photo that shows a focus on the colored area on the left and what the phone did when the focus was changed to the white paper on the right. Most phone cameras allow you to pick the focus point you want by simply tapping the screen.

Delayed Gratification – Use the 3-Second Timer

Use the 3 Second Timer to Get Better Pictures

Find and use the 3 second timer delay on your phone camera to avoid any blurriness from camera shake.

From Sue: Another way to ensure you picture is in focus is to use the camera phone’s 3 second delay function. Tap the timer icon on your camera app, and choose the 3 second delay. This will help you avoid out of focus photos caused by the camera shake that usually occurs when tapping the screen to snap the picture.

Catching the Shimmer

If you are using pens with metallic shimmer, you’ll need to pay closer attention to your light source to get some of that shine in your photos.

Getting Better Pictures of Your Coloring - Capturing the Shine

This picture was captured with the proper lighting and angle to best display the shiny metallic and glitter effects of the pens used. [Line art by Robin Pedrero from Adult Coloring Book Treasury, colored by Sue Chastain. Photo by Liz Masoner.]

A slightly less diffused light striking the page at a low angle will help bring up the shimmer in your photos. You’ll either need to tilt your page to get the light to strike it at the right angle, or photograph it in either early morning or late evening light to get the angle you need.

Getting Better Pictures of Your Coloring - Capturing Metallic Shine
The hard side light in this photo doesn’t capture the metallic and glitter effects of the pens used on the Fleur de Lis. Photo by Liz Masoner.
Getting Better Pictures of Your Coloring - Capturing Glittery Pages
Photographing glittery pages at too much of an angle will obscure the colors under the glitter shine. Photo by Liz Masoner.

Note that you don’t want too much angle or the glitter will actually obscure your colors.

Mobile Photo Editing Tips

From Sue: Sometimes just a little bit of tweaking can make a big difference in your pictures. SnapSeed is a great, free mobile photo editing app which can help you to make big improvements to your pics with just a few minutes of tweaking. Some quick and easy adjustments you may want to make in Snapseed are:

  • Crop out unnecessary background clutter, to put emphasis on the colored page.
  • Use the “Transform” adjustment to straighten and align the picture.
  • Try the one-click “Auto Adjust” under “Tune Image” and see if it makes your picture brighter.
  • Manually adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, ambiance, highlights, shadows, and warmth in the “Tune Image” area.

Here is a before and after example of a picture taken in low light and then edited in SnapSeed.

Getting Better Pictures of your Coloring - Image Editing Tips

On the left is the photo taken in low light. On the right is the same photo after making adjustments to the photo in Snapseed. [Colored by Rosa Lee Ramsay from a newsletter subscriber freebie.]

Get SnapSeed for Android in the Google Play Store

Get SnapSeed for iOS in the iTunes App Store

About Liz Masoner

Liz Masoner has been a professional photographer for 30 years and writes regularly about photography for HubaDub and several online publications. She has authored three photography how-to books.

Liz’s Books:
  • Amazon: Cell Phone Photo Tips: How to Take Better Photos with Your Smart Phone
  • Smashwords: Cell Phone Photo Tips: How to Take Better Photos with Your Smart Phone
  • Amazon: Composition in Photography
  • Smashwords: Composition in Photography
  • Smashwords: Introduction to Nature Photography

More from Liz: HubaDub | Facebook | Twitter | Google Plus

Thanks, Liz, for sharing your knowledge with us!

What tips and tricks have you found to make your pictures of coloring pages better? Let us know in the comments!

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Comments

  1. Israel Ontiveros says

    May 3, 2017 at 8:27 pm

    Really good info, may I use your link in a coloring FB group?

    • Sue says

      May 6, 2017 at 10:08 am

      Yes, you may!

      • Israel Ontiveros says

        August 25, 2017 at 10:14 am

        Thank you!!

  2. Cindy Nation says

    March 25, 2017 at 12:41 am

    Some great information here! Thanks Sue.

  3. MD Kennedy says

    August 2, 2016 at 5:45 pm

    Fantastic tips! I so agree with the “wait until morning” to get the best light. What do you think about scanning your finished pieces instead of taking pictures?

    • Sue says

      August 3, 2016 at 10:42 am

      Yes! Scanning is a great idea. The only time scanning is not a good idea is if you used neon colors, since the scanner can’t pick them up. Also avoid scanning glitter and metallic. They usually won’t scan well, and could dirty up your scanner glass. Great question!

  4. Connie Edwards says

    July 18, 2016 at 2:54 am

    Excellent suggestions, can’t wait to try them on next coloring page.

    Thanks to both of you,
    Connie

  5. Gail says

    June 9, 2016 at 7:39 pm

    Can’t wait to try these tips out. Downloading Snapspeed now as well! Thanks to both Sue and Liz for your time and for sharing.

  6. Charlotte Sanders says

    June 7, 2016 at 10:19 am

    This article was very insightful. Thank you for sharing❣ I am sure I will try several of the ideas especially for sparkles/glitter.

  7. Stephanie says

    June 4, 2016 at 4:34 pm

    This is awesome! I always struggle with quality when taking pictures of the pages I’ve colored! This will be super helpful! Thank you!

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