PBNify is a free browser-based tool that converts a photograph into a paint-by-numbers template — it reduces the image to a limited palette, outlines the regions and numbers them, and gives you something you can print. It costs nothing and it is genuinely clever.
It also stops there. What you get is an image file, not a kit. If you are looking for alternatives, it is worth being clear about which part you want to replace.
What a Converter Actually Does
Any photo-to-template tool does roughly the same three things:
- Reduces the colours. A photograph has thousands; a paintable template needs perhaps 20 to 40. The tool clusters similar colours together into a limited palette.
- Finds the regions. Adjacent pixels of the same reduced colour become one section with an outline around it.
- Numbers them and produces a colour key.
That is the whole process, and it is why results vary so much by photograph rather than by tool.
Where Automatic Conversion Struggles
Four predictable problems, whichever tool you use:
- Confetti. Photographs with fine detail or noise produce hundreds of tiny unpaintable specks. Grass, foliage and hair are the usual culprits.
- Soft backgrounds. A blurred background has no edges to find, so the tool invents arbitrary bands where none exist.
- Faces. Skin is a continuous gradient. Reduced to flat regions it goes blotchy, and the eyes — which are what make a portrait work — get lost in a small number of sections.
- Palette drift. The tool picks colours mathematically, so it will happily hand you 30 near-identical greens that no one could tell apart on a palette, let alone mix.
None of this means the tools are bad. It means the conversion is the easy half, and the judgement is the hard half.
Getting Better Results From a Free Tool
If you are staying with a free converter, five things make a real difference:
- Pick a photograph with strong, simple shapes and clear light. A building, a boat, a pet against a plain wall. Not a crowd, not a forest.
- Crop in tight. Fewer things, larger.
- Reduce the colour count below the default. Twenty large sections beats forty small ones every time.
- Blur the background slightly before uploading so the tool does not try to find detail in it.
- Print it large. A template that fits on a letter sheet will have sections too small to paint. Print at the size you intend to work.
Expect to clean up the output by hand, merging the specks into their neighbours. That step is where a usable template comes from.
Choosing an Alternative
Work out which of these three you actually want:
Another free converter. Fine if you want a printable template and have paint already. You will still be printing on paper, mixing your own colours to match the key, and doing the cleanup yourself. Compare on how much control they give you over the colour count and how cleanly they handle small regions.
Image-editing software. Posterise, then trace. Slower, and far more control. Worth it if you are making several.
A printed custom kit. Someone converts the image, prints it on canvas at a proper size, and mixes and numbers the paints to match. You are paying for the judgement and the materials, not for the algorithm.
What to Ask a Custom-Kit Seller
- Do you show a preview before printing? This matters more than anything else. Conversion involves judgement, and you want to see it before it is on canvas.
- Canvas or paper? Paper buckles under acrylic and cannot be framed convincingly.
- How many colours, and what size? A face needs a larger canvas than people expect.
- Where is it printed and how long does it take? Overseas production commonly means several weeks.
- Rolled or folded? Folded arrives with creases through the image that never fully flatten.
What We Do
To be straightforward about it: we sell a custom kit, so we are one of the alternatives, and you should weigh this accordingly.
Custom Paint by Numbers takes an image you upload, converts it, and prints it on canvas in the United States with the paints mixed and numbered to match. The canvas ships rolled in a tube rather than folded, the paints are vacuum-sealed, and there is an 11 by 17 printed reference so the numbers stay readable at working size.
What that does not do is make a difficult photograph easy. A crowded group shot or a very soft image will convert imperfectly for us as much as for a free tool. Choose the photograph carefully and the rest follows.
Finished ones are in the customer gallery, which is the honest way to judge whether the results are what you want.
If You Are Not Set on a Photograph
Free converters and custom kits both start from an image you supply. If what you actually want is a good evening with a brush rather than a specific picture, a stock design will be a better-composed painting than most photographs convert into — the artwork was made to be painted.
Our catalog is here, and printable templates explained covers the free-and-printed route in more detail.
