explaingit

lllyasviel/style2paints

18,182JavaScriptAudience · designerComplexity · 2/5DormantLicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

AI tool that automatically colorizes line art sketches into layered artwork, matching how digital artists actually work with separate color, gradient, and shading passes.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Colorizes line art
      Produces layered output
      Matches artist workflow
    Inputs
      Line art sketch
      Style reference image
      Color hint points
      Light direction
    Outputs
      Flat color layers
      Gradient passes
      Shading layer
      Colored line variants
    Use cases
      Speed up illustration
      Batch colorize sketches
      Explore color palettes
    Audience
      Digital artists
      Illustrators
      Comic creators

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Automatically colorize black-and-white sketches and line art into full-color illustrations with minimal manual input.

USE CASE 2

Generate separate color, gradient, and shading layers that can be imported and edited in Photoshop or other image editors.

USE CASE 3

Batch process multiple sketches using a consistent style reference to maintain a cohesive color palette across a series.

USE CASE 4

Explore different color palettes for a single sketch by providing different style reference images.

Tech stack

JavaScriptDeep LearningNeural Networks

Getting it running

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires downloading pre-trained neural network model weights; initial model load may take several minutes.

Use freely for any purpose including commercial. Keep the notice and disclose changes to the patent grant.

In plain English

Style2Paints is an AI-powered tool for automatically adding color to line art drawings. Unlike earlier AI colorization approaches that produce a single image output, Style2Paints is designed to match the layered workflow that illustrators and digital artists actually use: sketch, flat color fill, gradient and detail pass, and shading. The system can produce each of those stages as separate layers, which can then be opened and edited directly in image editing software. To colorize a sketch, you provide the line art and optionally a style reference image to influence the color palette, a few color hint points placed on the canvas, and a light source direction and color. The AI then produces flat color layers, a colorized version with and without the line art, colored line variants, and a rendered shading layer. According to the readme, about half of typical results are fully automatic (no hints needed) and most others require fewer than ten color hint clicks. The tool was presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018 and is available as downloadable software for Windows. Multiple versions exist (V4, V4.5, and a preview of V5), with the most recent complete release being V4.5. It does not require the user to install any programming environment, it runs like a normal application.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I have a line art sketch I want to colorize. How do I use Style2Paints to add color automatically and get editable layers?
Prompt 2
Show me how to place color hint points on my sketch in Style2Paints to guide the AI toward the colors I want.
Prompt 3
Can I use a reference image to make Style2Paints match a specific color style when colorizing my artwork?
Prompt 4
How do I export the separate flat color, gradient, and shading layers from Style2Paints into Photoshop for further editing?
Prompt 5
What's the difference between Style2Paints V4.5 and V5, and which version should I download for my Windows computer?
Open on GitHub → Explain another repo

Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.