How Color Count Changes Difficulty (and Which to Pick)

In Wabihana, difficulty is one choice: a detail level you tap before you convert. Each level sets two things at once — the number of zones (the little numbered regions you fill in) and the number of colours in the palette — and together those decide how faithful the painting is and how long it takes. More colours and zones capture more of your photo, but they also mean a longer paint with smaller, fiddlier pieces. This guide walks through all five levels, what each feels like to paint, and how to pick the one that fits your photo and your afternoon.

Zones and colours move together

It helps to see the two numbers as a pair. A zone is a single shape you paint; a colour is one entry in the palette, one number in the key. A low level gives you few colours and few zones, so the picture reads as bold, simplified blocks. A high level gives you many of both, so fine gradients — a cheek turning into shadow, a sky shading from pale to deep — get broken into enough small pieces to look smooth. You never pick the colours yourself: Wabihana reads the real colours in your image and fits the palette to them, so the level decides how many, not which.

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The five levels, from quick to absorbing

Wabihana has five presets. Here is what each one gives you and, more usefully, what it feels like to sit down and paint:

• Sketchy — 400 zones, 16 colours, about 3 minutes. Bold and impressionistic. It reads like a poster or a woodcut: big flat shapes, strong colour, the subject boiled down to its essentials. A lovely quick win.
• Easy — 900 zones, 32 colours, about 6 minutes. Still relaxed and forgiving, but with enough colours to shape a face or catch the light on an object. The sweet spot for a short, calm session.
• Medium — 1,800 zones, 64 colours, about 12 minutes. The all-rounder. Enough detail to look clearly like your photo, without zones so small they strain your eyes. This is the right pick for most photos and most people.
• Hard — 3,000 zones, 96 colours, about 20 minutes. A faithful, absorbing paint. Fine features — strands of hair, the texture of fur, subtle skin tones — start to come through. A real sit-down project rather than a coffee-break one.
• Insane — 5,000 zones, 128 colours, about 33 minutes. The top tier, and Pro-only. As close to the photo as the canvas gets: long, meditative, and deeply detailed. Best saved for a photo you truly love and want to linger over.

The trade-off, honestly

More colours and zones buy you fidelity — the painting looks more like the photo. That is genuinely worth it for a portrait you want to recognise, or a landscape whose whole charm is its detail. But every extra colour is another region to find and fill, and past a point the zones get small and fiddly: tiny slivers along an edge, single pieces that take a moment to locate. That is not a flaw, it is simply what detail costs. The best level is the one where the extra fidelity is worth the extra time to you — and that answer is different for a quick unwind than for a keepsake.

Which should I pick?

Start from what you want out of the session, not from the biggest number:

1. A quick, relaxing session. Reach for Sketchy or Easy. You will have something finished and satisfying in minutes, and the bold look is a style in its own right, not a compromise.
2. Most photos, most of the time. Pick Medium. It looks clearly like your picture, stays comfortable to paint, and rarely disappoints. When in doubt, this is the answer.
3. A keepsake you want to look like the photo. Go Hard, or Insane if you have Pro and the patience to enjoy it. For a portrait of someone you love or a place that matters, the extra time is the point.

If you are brand new to this, the beginner’s guide is a gentle place to start — it pairs nicely with an Easy or Medium canvas.

Your photo sets the real ceiling

Here is the part people miss: the level you pick is a maximum, not a promise. Wabihana can only spend colours on detail that is actually in your image. A simple, flat photo — a plain background, soft even tones, not much texture — genuinely has nothing for 128 colours to describe, so the app clamps down to what the picture supports rather than inventing dither and noise. Choosing Insane for a minimalist snapshot will not make it richer; it just gives you the same result you would have got at a lower level, with more effort. More colours is not automatically better. It is better only when the photo has the detail to fill them.

This is a direct consequence of how the conversion works — deterministic image processing that reads your real pixels, with no AI guessing or repainting. If you want the why behind it, we lay it out in how a photo becomes a numbered canvas. And if you want a photo that can hold high detail — sharp, well-lit, with real colour separation — how to choose the perfect photo is the guide for that.

A simple way to decide

When you upload a photo, you will see the levels as chips. You do not have to overthink it. Ask two questions: how much detail does this photo actually have, and how long do I feel like painting? A busy, detailed picture and a free evening point to Hard or Insane. A clean, simple picture or a short break point to Sketchy, Easy, or Medium. Everything is free to start; only the Insane tier needs Pro, and you can see what that includes on the pricing page. When you are ready, start with your own photo and try a level or two — the same photo at two settings tells you more than any guide can.