Doodle Dragon Studio

Turn a photo into an illustration

Import a photo, review the description the app produces, and generate a storybook illustration based on it.

2 min read

Studio Plus

  1. Import the photo

    From the page editor or the Create tab, choose Photo or camera. Take a new photo or pick one from your gallery. It is copied into your project — your original in your camera roll is never touched.

  2. Edit it first if it needs it

    Use the on-device Light, Contrast, Colour, and Warmth adjustments if the source needs them. You can also choose Original, Warm, Storybook, or Clean B&W before generating.

  3. Ask for a description

    Tap Create with AI. The app prepares a metadata-free copy — no location, no camera information, no timestamps — and asks a vision model to describe what is in the picture.

    Tip. This step is free but rate limited. It exists so you have something to edit rather than a blank box.

  4. Edit the description

    The description appears in an editable field. Read it carefully. It is often accurate but flat, and the fix is to add the style and mood you want.

    Change “two children on a beach” to “two children building a sandcastle on a wide empty beach at sunset, soft watercolour picture-book style, long shadows, warm golden light”.

  5. Set style and shape, check the cost, generate

    Pick an art style and a shape, then press the button — it shows Create illustration · 1 credit.

  6. Review the result

    Accept it, adjust and retry, or discard. Both the photo and the illustration stay in your project library, each labelled with where it came from, so you can use either on the page.

When to illustrate and when not to

An illustrated version is lovely for a storybook where the whole thing is drawn. For a travelogue or a family keepsake, real photographs are often the better choice — they are the actual memory, and no illustration improves on that.

A nice middle path the app supports: keep the photograph on the page, and make an illustrated alternate for the cover.

Photos of real people Import only photos you have the right to use, with the consent of the people in them. The app does not do face recognition, does not build biometric templates, does not infer relationships, and never publishes anything. See how your data is used with AI.

What about faces?

Generated illustrations do not reliably reproduce a specific person’s face, and we do not offer a feature that tries to. If the likeness matters, use the photograph.