I build this to scratch my own itch.
I built this tool in about an hour—with a lot of help from ChatGPT. It’s a simple little app that runs in the browser, converts an image to high-contrast black and white, and saves it as a PDF for tracing on a Kindle Scribe. Nothing fancy. But it works.
Building it was pretty straightforward. Packaging it, though—writing the instructions, licenses, and getting it ready for sale—probably took just as long, maybe longer.
I listed it on Etsy because I’ve been having a bit of success there with physical products, and I was curious to see if a digital download like this could gain traction. Etsy also handles all the sales tax stuff as the Merchant of Record, which is one less thing for me to worry about.
I built the tool for myself, but I haven’t actually used the PDFs yet, other than to create the demo. My plan is to turn vacation photos into ink-style line drawings, print them with a toner or pigment printer, and then paint over them with watercolors—mostly using an airbrush, though I’ll probably do some traditional painting too.
These aren’t going to be perfect paintings. I don’t have the time for that. These will be fast, loose sketches—something expressive but lightweight.
And that’s actually one of the things I love about this idea: I don’t have to take perfect photos while I’m on vacation. I can snap something quick, crop it later, trace it, and turn it into a painting when I’m back home. It keeps me in the moment while I’m traveling, and still gives me something creative to work with later.
If you’ve got a Kindle Scribe or another e-ink tablet, and you want to turn your images into traceable sketches, you might like this tool too.
Written by Joel Dare with the help of AI on May 7, 2025.