Color By Number Pro vs Photoshop, Canva & Procreate: 2026 Comparison
If you're building coloring books for Amazon KDP, the tool you pick decides whether each book takes you 4 hours or 40. Picking the wrong tool is the single biggest reason indie publishers quit after their first 2 titles.
I've used all four in production. Here's the honest comparison after publishing 30+ titles across both my own catalog (KOKOMA Press) and books I've helped other creators ship.
The TL;DR verdict
Different tools, different jobs:
- Color By Number Pro — purpose-built for color-by-number book interiors. Fastest path from image to KDP-ready PDF. Use for: interior generation.
- Photoshop — manual everything, infinitely flexible, infinitely slow for batch work. Use for: one-off custom covers, retouching specific pages.
- Canva — drag-and-drop simplicity, great for covers, can't actually generate color-by-number cells. Use for: cover design only.
- Procreate — iPad-native illustration. Cannot batch and has no number-grid output. Use for: hand-illustrated covers or single-page art.
In practice, most working KDP publishers use a combination: Color By Number Pro for interior + Canva for cover. That stack delivers a complete book in 8–15 hours. Photoshop and Procreate are specialist tools that complement, not replace.
Full feature comparison
| Feature | Color By Number Pro | Photoshop | Canva | Procreate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic color-by-number generation | Yes (1-click) | Manual (hours per page) | No | No |
| Batch processing (multiple images) | Yes — up to 410 | Actions / scripts only | No | No |
| 5 cell shapes (square, hex, circle, diamond, triangle) | Yes — per image | Manual | No | No |
| Custom RGB palette + import/export | Yes | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Auto answer key generation | Yes | No | No | No |
| Auto table of contents | Yes | No | Manual | No |
| KDP-compliant PDF export (full book interior) | Yes | Yes (manual setup) | Yes (manual) | Single page only |
| 6 KDP book sizes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Manual canvas |
| Cover design tools | No | Yes (powerful) | Yes (KDP templates) | Yes |
| Works offline | Yes (desktop HTML) | Yes | No (cloud) | Yes (iPad) |
| One-time purchase | Yes ($27–$97) | $22.99/month | Free tier; $12.99/mo Pro | $12.99 one-time |
Tool-by-tool deep dive
Color By Number Pro
What it does well: One-click color-by-number from any image. Batch processes up to 410 images per session (Premium). Five cell shapes pickable per individual page. Custom palettes with import/export. Auto-generates answer keys, table of contents, page numbers. Exports a complete KDP-compliant PDF interior in one click.
What it doesn't do: Cover design. You'll still need Canva, Photoshop, or another tool for the cover.
Time to ship a 100-page book interior: 1–3 hours.
Cost: $27 (Basic) / $47 (Standard) / $97 (Premium) — one-time, lifetime updates.
Best for: Indie KDP publishers building a coloring book series. Anyone who's tried to do this in Photoshop and hated their life.
Adobe Photoshop
What it does well: Anything you can imagine, given enough time. Custom illustrations, advanced retouching, complex covers, specific page overrides. Actions and scripts can automate some workflows if you know JavaScript or invest in custom action sets.
What it doesn't do: Color-by-number generation natively. To make a color-by-number page in Photoshop, you'd manually: posterize → trace contours → flood-fill regions with colors → overlay numbers in each region → export. 20–40 minutes per page.
Time to ship a 100-page book interior: 35–70 hours.
Cost: $22.99/month subscription (Photoshop alone) or $59.99/month Creative Cloud All-Apps.
Best for: Custom cover design, illustration work, fixing specific pages that a generator produced imperfectly. Should NOT be your primary interior tool.
Canva
What it does well: Cover design with KDP-sized templates pre-built. Drag-and-drop simplicity. Huge library of fonts, graphics, and book cover layouts. Affordable. The fastest path to a professional-looking cover for non-designers.
What it doesn't do: Color-by-number generation. Canva can't take an image and produce a numbered grid. You can't use Canva to build the interior of a coloring book.
Time to ship a cover: 30 minutes (template-based) to 3 hours (custom).
Cost: Free tier works for basic covers; Canva Pro at $12.99/mo unlocks brand kits, background remover, and premium templates.
Best for: Cover design only. Pair with Color By Number Pro for the full workflow.
Procreate
What it does well: iPad-native digital illustration. Incredible brushes, animation, hand-drawn aesthetics. Great for illustrators who want a tactile drawing experience and who plan to hand-illustrate covers or single feature pages.
What it doesn't do: Anything that involves batch processing or coloring-book-specific output. No multi-page PDF assembly. No number grid generation. No KDP-formatted output.
Time to ship a 100-page book interior: Not the right tool. You'd be hand-illustrating every single page.
Cost: $12.99 one-time (iPad only).
Best for: Hand-illustrated covers, single artistic showcase pages, or for artists who want to draw rather than generate.
The "actually working" stack
The KDP publishers I know who consistently ship 2–4 books a month all use roughly the same toolchain:
- Niche + keyword research: Publisher Rocket
- Image sourcing: Midjourney for AI; Vecteezy for licensed vectors
- Interior generation: Color By Number Pro Premium
- Cover design: Canva Pro with KDP templates
- Final QC: KDP Previewer (free, mandatory)
Total cost: ~$95 one-time + ~$60/mo recurring. Time to ship one complete book: 8–15 hours.
Compare that to the "Photoshop everything" approach: ~$23/mo recurring + 50–80 hours per book. The math decides itself.
Common mistake: using Procreate for the whole book
This shows up in coloring book Facebook groups constantly. Someone has Procreate, loves it, and decides to build a 100-page coloring book by hand-illustrating every single page on their iPad.
Two months later they've completed 12 pages and burned out. Procreate is an illustration tool, not a publishing tool. The math: even at 30 minutes per page (very fast), 100 pages = 50 hours of focused illustration work. At a normal pace of 1–2 hours per illustration, it's 100–200 hours. That's a part-time job for an entire month, before you even touch the cover.
If you love drawing, use Procreate for the cover. Don't use it for the interior.
What about free online color-by-number generators?
There are several free tools online. They typically: cap you at 1 image per session, watermark the output, lock paid features behind a subscription, or don't export KDP-compliant PDFs. They're great for testing the workflow once — not for production.
You can test our own browser-based tool free here if you want to see the workflow before committing to a desktop version.
Decision time
- You're publishing 1+ books/quarter: Color By Number Pro for interior + Canva for cover. End of decision.
- You're a Photoshop pro who already has the subscription: Keep Photoshop for covers, add Color By Number Pro for interiors. Drop the 30-hour-per-book interior workflow.
- You're an iPad-first illustrator: Procreate for cover, Color By Number Pro for interior.
- You only want one tool: There isn't one. Cover design and interior generation are different problems. Use the right tool for each.
Try Color By Number Pro free first
See exactly what 1-click color-by-number generation looks like before you buy. Browser-based, no signup required.
Try the free generator →FAQ
Can I make a KDP coloring book with only Canva?
No. Canva can produce the cover and assemble pages into a PDF, but it cannot generate the actual color-by-number page content (numbered cells filling an image based on a color palette). You'd need to source pre-made color-by-number pages elsewhere first.
Is Photoshop's automation enough for batch color-by-number?
Photoshop Actions can record repetitive steps, but the color-by-number algorithm (image segmentation, color clustering, region numbering, palette assignment) isn't a single sequence of menu clicks. You'd need to write custom JavaScript or use a specialized plugin. Most publishers find this more expensive (time-wise) than just using a purpose-built tool.
Does Color By Number Pro do covers?
No — it's an interior generator. For covers, pair it with Canva (easiest), Photoshop (most flexible), or Procreate (illustration-heavy).
Which tool is fastest from image to published book?
Color By Number Pro Premium + Canva, with a typical 8–15 hour total workflow for a 100-page book. The next-fastest combo (Photoshop + Canva, using custom Actions) is 25–40 hours.
Do I need an iPad to make coloring books?
No. Color By Number Pro and Canva both run on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Procreate is the only iPad-required tool in this comparison, and it's optional in the stack.
Published June 15, 2026 by Prasad Chandrasekaran, founder of Color By Number Pro and publisher at KOKOMA Press. Independent comparison — all four tools were tested in production publishing real KDP coloring book titles.