DIY Coloring Book | For the holiday or any day.

If you like to get crafty and have Photoshop and one last loved one or little munchkin on your list you'd like to give something special, this is for you. Better hurry - you have less than 24 hours to get it done!

My girlfriend had me help her create a coloring book from some of her photos as a Christmas gift. She got the idea from a website she ran across earlier this year; I take no credit, but I love it and wanted to share with all you DIYers. My sister's step-daughter, Sydney, is 9-years-old, so a coloring book seemed like the perfect gift I could custom make for her. Here's how I went about creating it*:

1. Start with selected photo open in Photoshop.

2. Make the photo black and white: Image > Mode > Grayscale

3. Adjust the contrast in the photo: Image > Adjustments > Levels
Move the black arrow and the white arrow in towards the gray arrow to get more contrast.

4. Turn the photo into an illustration: Filter > Sketch > Photocopy
The size of your photo will affect the way this step works. The larger the photo the more crisp the lines in your illustration will be.

5. Clean up the illustration: Filter > Sketch > Stamp
Adjust the Light/Dark Balance and Smoothness bars until you're happy with your image.

6. Save and print! I put a nice thick border around my images and printed each one out on an 8.5x11" sheet of thick white paper.

7. Give and color! Here are a couple other pages from Sydney's Christmas coloring book:

Merry Christmas, Sydney!
*I'm using CS3, so depending on your version of the software, your commands and the results may be different.