You can make your own paint by number for free, and the free part is real — but it covers the outline, not the kit. Free software will take a photograph and turn it into a numbered map of flat color areas that you can print. What it will not do is give you a primed canvas, a set of paints mixed to match those numbers, or brushes. Those you still buy, and by the time you have, the saving is smaller than it looks.
That said, the DIY route gets you something a bought kit cannot: any image you like, at any size, numbered exactly as you please. If that is what you are after, here is how it actually works and where it gets difficult.
What "free" gets you
Every free method produces the same thing: a line drawing divided into regions, each labeled with a number, plus a key telling you which color each number is. That is the whole output. You then need to
- print the outline, or transfer it onto a canvas
- buy or stretch a canvas and prime it
- buy paint, and mix each numbered color to match the key
- buy brushes fine enough for the small regions
The mixing is the part people underestimate. A generated palette will hand you twenty or thirty colors, and matching them from a starter set of primaries takes real time and a good eye. If you would rather skip that, mixing is exactly what a bought kit removes.
The free tools worth using
PBNify
PBNify is a free browser tool that does the whole conversion in one step. You upload a photograph, pick how many colors you want, and it returns an outlined, numbered image plus the palette. Nothing to install and nothing to pay. We have written up how to get a usable result out of PBNify separately, because the default settings rarely give the best one.
GIMP
GIMP is a free, open-source image editor, and it gives you far more control than a one-click converter. Two functions do most of the work. Converting the image to indexed color forces it down to a set number of colors — try somewhere between 12 and 24. Posterize does something similar while keeping the image in full color mode. Either way, you end up with flat blocks instead of gradients, which is what a numbered canvas needs.
From there you print the flattened image, lay tracing paper over it, and outline the color boundaries by hand. Slow, but you control every edge, and you can merge fussy little regions that no one would enjoy painting.
Our roundup of paint by number software compares the options in more detail, and there is a companion piece on turning a photo into a paint by number free.
Getting the outline onto canvas
Once you have a printed outline, it has to go onto the surface you will paint. Three methods, in order of how much equipment they need.
Tracing
Tape the printout to a window in daylight, tape the canvas over it, and trace the lines through. This works well on thin canvas or paper and not at all on heavy primed canvas, which is too opaque to see through. A lightbox or a glass table with a lamp underneath does the same job better.
Transfer paper
Graphite transfer paper goes face-down between the printout and the canvas. Trace the lines with a hard pencil and the pressure leaves a graphite line underneath. This is the most reliable method for canvas, and it works at any size the printout can be tiled to. Use a light touch — heavy graphite shows through pale paint.
Projection
If you have a projector, throwing the image onto the canvas and drawing round it is by far the fastest route to a large piece. It is also the only practical way to scale a small photograph up to something like 24x36 without the printed lines going soft.
Choosing a photo that will work
This decides more than the software does. Photographs that convert well have big, clearly separated shapes and strong, even light. Photographs that convert badly have soft gradients, busy backgrounds, deep shadow, or several small faces.
- Good candidates: a building, a single pet against a plain background, a landscape with a clear horizon, a close-up flower.
- Difficult: group shots, anything backlit, hair and fur in low light, water with fine reflections.
- Crop hard. A tight crop gives every region more room, and bigger regions are enormously easier to paint.
Faces are the hard case. Skin is a continuous gradient, and forcing it into flat numbered blocks reads as blotchy unless you use a lot of closely related tones — which then makes the painting much harder. If the photo is a portrait, expect to spend most of your effort there.
Matching the paint
The generated key gives you color values, not paint. Bridging that gap is the real work of a homemade kit.
- Mix each color once, in enough quantity for the whole painting. Running out mid-canvas and re-mixing almost never matches.
- Keep the mixes in small airtight pots, not on an open palette. Acrylic skins over within the hour.
- Paint a numbered swatch of every color on a scrap of the same canvas and let it dry before you commit. Acrylic dries noticeably darker than it looks wet.
- Work light areas and large areas first, then the darks and the detail on top. Dark over light covers; light over dark usually needs a second coat.
If you want more on the mixing itself, the color wheel guide covers which combinations actually produce a clean result and which turn muddy.
Where the free route runs out
Honestly: the outline is the easy 20 percent. The tedious parts are numbering hundreds of small regions legibly, mixing and storing thirty matched colors, and discovering three hours in that a region you generated is too small to get a brush into. People who enjoy the process enjoy it a great deal. People who wanted the painting rather than the preparation usually abandon it before the canvas is primed.
There is also a legal point worth knowing. If you are converting someone else's photograph or a painting you found online, that image is very likely still in copyright. For your own wall it is nobody's business; if you plan to sell the result, it matters.
The alternative, plainly
If what you actually want is your own photograph as a numbered canvas without doing any of the above, that is what a custom paint by numbers kit is. You send the photo, and it comes back as a pre-printed cotton canvas with the paints already mixed and matched to the numbers, vacuum-sealed, plus an 11x17 reference print. It is printed in the USA and comes in 12x16, 16x20 and 18x24, framed or unframed. The canvas ships rolled in a tube rather than folded, so there is no crease to fight.
Neither route is wrong. Making your own is the better project if the making is the point. Buying one is the better project if the painting is the point. If you are new to painting either way, the beginner's guide covers setup, order of work and cleanup, and applies to a homemade canvas just as well as a bought one.
