Kids have such active imaginations. Give a kid something to colour, and they'll tell you how that image comes to life. A new app called colAR extends those imaginations even further by bringing 2D coloured photos to 3D heights. Using your smartphone, you can make lots of kids very happy with this new app.

How to Bring a Coloured Picture To Life

First, you have to download a picture for your kids to colour from the colAR website (free). Then, you'll have to print that picture out, choose your crayons, and colour away. Once the picture is finished, you will have to download the colAR app, point the app at the newly coloured photo, and watch as the app turns that photo into a 3D wonder.

This app is really fun to use, even for adults. You can choose from various pictures to colour including airplanes, teddy bears, dragons, and even a 'design your own' picture. Pictures can be viewed from all angles, zoomed in on or zoomed out of, and the colours that you use to actually colour a photograph appear in the 3D version of the app.

The app is kind of like all of those augmented reality apps, but this one is aimed at letting the imagination of kids soar. There's also lots of potential for this technology too.

A Whole New World of Colouring Books?

If the colAR app (bad name, great app!) takes off, colouring book creators could have a field day with this technology. Entire colouring books could be created that can correspond with the 3D tech colAR has come up with. That would make tons of kids happy, and it would also bring some peace and quiet to parents. Sure, a smartphone is needed, for now, but this tech could be sold and used on many different devices in the future.

The colAR app is currently available for iOS and Android right now. The colouring page selection is somewhat limited, but I'm betting that this gets picked up by some VCs along the way. It also seems likely that the colAR developers will be creating additional images and downloads in the near future (holiday colouring books, anyone?). The company has stated that more pages will be coming out in August, so stay tuned for additional fun 3D images!

Where to Find colAR

As mentioned, this app is available for iOS and Android. ColAR is a free app, too, so you don't even have to pay to download that app - and the colouring pages are free too. It's really a win-win situation for both users and the development team. From an investor's standpoint, it's easy to see how colAR can make money with this app too.

It's nice to see augmented reality being used in a way that isn't related to advertising (though big-name brands like McDonalds could easily create colouring books...). Kudos goes out to the ColAR team for coming up with something innovative that has lots of potential - both for investors and for users!