Chromalie · Help & features

Make the most of your colouring studio

Choose a page, pick a colour, and paint at your own pace. This guide explains the main tools and how to keep your work.

1. Find something to colour

Browse the library by subject or collection. Search for a particular theme, or use the detail filter to find simpler or more intricate pages. Open a page to enter the studio.

2. Choose how to paint

Fill colours a detected region with a tap or click. In the lines clips brush strokes to detected shapes. Freehand lets you paint beyond those boundaries. Use the eraser to remove applied colour without removing the original drawing.

Try pencil, coloured pencil, marker, acrylic, oil, gouache, watercolour, pastel, charcoal, dry brush, airbrush, glitter and ink. The effects are digital approximations of traditional media, and results depend on the selected brush settings.

3. Work with layers

Use + Layer to add a separate transparent painting layer (up to five). Select a layer to paint on it. Use Hide or Show to control whether it appears, and adjust its slider to change opacity. Layers are included in local saves and editable project downloads. Each layer keeps its own painting undo history during the current session. Rename, reorder or delete layers using their controls. Changes to the layer stack cannot be undone, so save an editable project before deleting a layer.

4. Find your colours

Choose a palette or pick a custom colour. The Colour harmonies row offers neighbouring, complementary and triadic suggestions based on your selected colour. The Recent colours row keeps your last eight selections during the current session.

Choose from Everyday, Bright, Pastel, Garden, Earth and Ocean, or build My palette using the custom colour picker and Add colour. Adjust shade, brush size and opacity to refine your painting. When device saving is enabled, your selected palette and custom colours can be remembered in this browser.

5. Find tools on a phone

Open Tools + to reveal additional controls. Tap Colours for palettes and shades, or open the brush and settings strips. Tap the artwork or press Escape to close an open strip. Pinch to zoom where your device supports it.

6. Save, reopen and download

Chromalie can save paintings locally in this browser when device saving is enabled. Visit My work to reopen saved pages or My journal to browse them. Download a PNG for a finished picture. You can also download an editable Chromalie project and reopen it later.

Important: local browser storage is not a cloud backup. Keep downloaded copies of work you value. If saving fails, use Retry save or download your painting before leaving the page.

7. When something does not work as expected

A fill crosses an outline: the source drawing may have a gap. Try adjusting gap closing, selecting a smaller region, or painting carefully with an in-the-lines brush. A brush seems inactive: wait for the page's shapes to finish preparing, or choose Freehand if you want unrestricted painting. Saved work is missing: check that you are on the same browser and device and that site data has not been cleared.

What is still being developed?

Independent editable paint layers, guaranteed offline painting and painting replay are not yet released as complete features. Some advanced stylus behaviour requires testing on real hardware.

Interested in the engineering?

The engineering guide explains the rendering model, shape detection, local storage, testing and GitHub Pages deployment. You can also read the source repository.

Questions or problems?

Contact sales@storywell.in. For information about local storage, read our privacy notice and storage notice.