Painting books are no longer a thing for children and have become a craze among adults. The trend has reached the virtual world and, currently, there are coloring apps that promise experiences that mix creativity and relaxation.
Despite having the same purpose, the applications differ from each other in terms of drawing styles and available tools. Depending on the program, it is also possible to merge a photo with a drawing or transform an image from the gallery or made on the spot into a piece of art.
Check out the list of the best coloring apps available for Android and iOS devices below.
1. Colorfy
Colorfy offers design options divided into different categories, such as basic, floral, animals, mandalas, gardens and geometric patterns. Users can also choose famous paintings, such as Monet and Dalí, or paint well-known places, such as Christ the Redeemer, Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Pyramids of Egypt, among others.
The app also lets you create your own mandala or take a picture of a drawing and color it within the program. Anyone who wants to take advantage of all the imaging options and features, such as a variety of brush styles and applying color gradients, has to pay.
The service offers a monthly and annual plan option and allows you to perform a free trial of use of all features for a period of seven days.
Colorfy is available for Android and iOS devices.
2. Unicorn - Color by Number
Unicorn - Color by Number has among its differentials the style of the drawings. All of them are pixel art and refer to computer figures in the early 1990s. The images are divided into categories such as animals, fashion, food, games, mandalas, transport, zodiac and many others.
The app offers a less free painting style, as the squares are numbered and each number corresponds to a color. However, if you don't want to, it is not necessary to follow exactly the suggested tone.
The user can also take a selfie through the app and the photo is converted into pixelated format to be later painted. You can choose between easy and hard levels. The higher the difficulty level, the more coloring squares will be arranged.
Like Colorfy, Unicorn is a freemium program, meaning it offers some figures for free, but most of them are only available for the paid package. Developers allow you to test features for free for three days.
The program is available for Android and iOS smartphones.
3. Coloring Book for Me
Despite being freemium, Coloring Book for Me is one of the apps that offers more drawing options for free on our list. However, for that, it is necessary to deal with constant ads and subscription suggestions on the screen.
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The number of categories available is impressive. Mandalas, people, anime, animals, comics, flowers, fashion and famous places are just some of the themes. Users can also paint figures of the Om Nom frog and images that merge drawing with photographs.
Among the features offered is the possibility to fill a drawing with a photo from the gallery or made on the spot. You can also apply textures to images, such as brick, crumpled paper, and noise.
The user can even create their own mandala and turn their photos into paintings. All your creations can be shared to inspire other app users.
Coloring Book for Me is available for Android and iOS devices.
4. Chamy - Paint by numbers
Chamy is another app option for coloring by numbers. Every day of the month, it offers users a new design for free. Despite not dividing the images into categories, there is a wide variety of themes, such as people, animals, nature, posters, mandalas, among others.
When opening the figure you want to paint, the color palette with the corresponding numbers is displayed. When touching one of them, the area that should be colored becomes gray. Unlike Unicorn, it is not possible to color a zone with a different color than the one predetermined by the app.
There is no image editing option other than painting. But the amount of designs available for free is higher than most apps of the genre and that should be very pleasing.
Chamy - Paint by Numbers is available for Android and iOS.
5. Mandala coloring page
Despite its name, the app offers more than options for mandalas to paint. There are also figures of people, animals and flowers. Although the number of designs available is not very large, the variety of tools is attractive.
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Starting with the number of colors and their subtle variations. There are, for example, twelve shades of blue available to users. In addition, you can choose to auto-fill spaces or eight brush templates. There is even the chance to further customize the illustration, including stickers and text.
The other features offered are creating your own mandala, the option to use a blank page to create your own designs, and the “Magical” tool, which reveals an illustration while the sheet is freely colored.
One of the main advantages of Mandala coloring pages over other apps is that all the content and resources are available for free. For this, it is necessary to support the display of advertising content. If you don't want to, the developers offer an ad-free paid version.
The app is only available for Android phones.
If you want a different creative experience, check out our list of apps that turn your photos into drawings.
