What The Tech App of the Day: Splat
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Technology Reporter
Young kids spend an incredible amount of time on smartphones and tablets, watching videos and playing games. Screens are not going anywhere, but one app is trying to bring back something a little more old school. Creativity.
It is called Splat, and it turns everyday photos into personalized coloring book pages.
What kid does not love to color? The problem is finding coloring books that actually feel personal or interesting. Splat lets kids make their own coloring pages using photos you already have.
Here is how it works. Take a photo of anything. Your house, your family, the dog, the cat, or even a favorite toy. In just a few seconds, Splat turns that image into a black and white page ready to color.
The app lets you choose from different styles before converting the photo. Once it is ready, kids can color directly on the screen using their finger, or you can print the page and hand them real crayons or markers. That part alone will win over a lot of parents.
The quality is surprisingly good. Lines are clean and detailed, not messy or distorted. It works much better on an iPad or tablet than on a phone, simply because of the larger screen. Printing the pages works great too, especially if you want to keep kids off the screen altogether.
Yes, you could use ChatGPT or another AI tool to create coloring pages from photos. But Splat is built specifically for kids and parents, and it keeps everything simple. No prompts. No settings to figure out. Just take a photo and color. Plus, it allows the child to color in the picture on a phone or tablet. It isn’t limited to printing it out.
Splat has no ads, which is refreshing. You can create one image for free to try it out. After that, it costs $5 for a week of unlimited creations or $50 for a full year. If you want to print an entire custom coloring book in one week, the weekly option makes sense.
The Splat app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
It is a fun, creative way to turn screen time into something a little more hands-on
