Lake: Coloring Books & Journal Reviews

i ended up trying this app because i liked the focus on independent artists and the emphasis on supporting them, not taking advantage of them for profit. additionally, i’ve found that it has the most illustrations/artists that fit my personal style preference. that said, i can’t help but feel that it falls short in a few major ways. it absolutely needs a couple more coloring tools - why there is no crayon/colored pencil type option is beyond me. i find myself using competing apps like Pigment because i just can’t enjoy the limited brush styles offered by this app - three brushes, limited size adjustment, and no adjustment of opacity? just feels like a let down for the cost of a subscription coloring app. as for the color palette - although the idea of the rainy, cloudy, and sunny palettes is cute and is a very nice way to explore colors, i do long for an option that allows finer tuning, and the creation of custom palettes or the saving of colors beyond the 6-8 colors in the history panel. last, one little annoyance i always find myself frustrated with is the very limited recall of the undo option, especially when there’s no tap-to-undo on ipad and i constantly find myself accidentally placing small marks on the canvas that end up requiring erasing the entire section. anyways, in short - nice illustrations, great artists, cute interface - just lacking quite a bit in terms of real coloring tools.

Overall, this color app is ACTUALLY very good! At first when I downloaded Lake, it gave me a few free pages to color while the rest are locked. I almost deleted Lake when I thought I would only get a few free pages to color on the first day. But after a day, new free pages popped up for you to color and keep them, which is why I kept Lake.

There are only four tools/brushes for you to use for coloring, which is pretty simple. But it’s not. After playing with the tools, I found a lot of ways to create textures and gradients for my colors, and this is what makes Lake special. Because Lake gives you a color wheel where you can switch from dark to light colors, it’s really easy to choose the colors that you want.

Though the only concern that I have is saving your works for multiple devices. I usually use my phone for coloring but I also want to color on my iPad. Lake only allows you to save your progress in your iCloud, which is not very convenient since it does not work for me. So I’m hoping that Lake would have connection to my account for some sort of social media like Facebook or connect my account to email.

I love Lake, for so many reasons. It is very user friendly, and easy to figure out. The artwork is amazing! It’s all so different, and I think that makes it very well rounded. There’s something for everyone, and they’re constantly adding new artists, which keeps you from running out of things to color. I’ve used both the paid version, and the free version, both are great. I do enjoy getting a bigger variety of colors and access to MORE artwork in the paid version, but this is not at app that loses its appeal if you don’t pay for it. And both versions are gloriously ad free! The creators are awesome if you ever need to contact them for support, but also just in encouraging you to share your creations on social media, and I’ve even had a few of the artists reach out and leave comments as well that they liked my pictures, etc. Its just a really well made app that runs smoothly, and has become an essential part of my “unwind routine”.

I think Lake needs improvement I think it is a really good app for like coloring and I am very very picky person about apps but it gives you all the supplies for coloring that you need to like make use of successful but they do they have to make like what I don’t like about it is that they have make you wait till like I could draw something they have to make you wait 25 minutes to wait to draw another thing and it’s very creative app but I wouldn’t recommend getting it because of like a lot of glitches and it’s gotten like whenever I try to zoom out it starts coloring and then it gets really annoying so yeah and that’s why every day of three star so yes if you don’t agree with me it’s OK but this is just my opinion everyone else has other opinions and I respect that but this is just my point of you and yes I certainly do love Lake I am as I said in the beginning I am a very picky person about apps and I also love how creative Lake is so without other to say everything’s a three star hopefully it gets better with Lake and I can read a five star sooner or if not but yes thank you for letting me respond to your app and yes hopefully you respond and fix or you don’t have to fix for me but it’s OK

this app is a nice coloring app, probably on one of the better ones out there because you can actually color and shade each part of the drawing. The overall drawings for coloring are awesome and very unique, you won’t find these kinds of drawings anywhere else, which is another reason why this app is a top choice for me. The overall experience is nice and the final results almost look like a real painting, it’s really quite a bit different then any other painting program I’ve tried. this app doesn’t overwhelm you with a bunch of tools and such, it gives you what you need to get great results and let’s you concentrate on your work. Selections are easy and the navigation is simple, I just wish there was a way to rotate the canvas while working, I often have to rotate my iPad to compensate for this. They are also are having a killer deal right now on subscriptions, I signed up for a year and I’m really glad I did, so far I’m loving it.

I love Lake!! I found it when the pandemic started and have been using it on and off. It’s really polished, and I love the selection. I do think there’s more I wish Lake could do. For one, as other have brought up, I’d really love more brushes or ways to control color/save colors. I don’t have much art experience at all, so this may be a skill problem, not a tools problem, but once I started experimenting, I hit certain limits to the tools provided. I would love the ability to blend more. I also feel that even more control over brush sizing could be nice.(Also - maybe adding glitter or more metallic colors of some sort? Not a tool, but.) I also think it would be neat to see other peoples creations for inspiration in something like a shared gallery, or a tips and tricks section with some coloring tutorials. this app has been an excellent way for me to open the door into doing more art in my life and I’m excited to see if they expand more on what they provide. Either way, it’s a great app! :)

At first, it is a nice app with very interesting and unique features, but it is a very glitchy app. I found a lot of the images were only for premium. I also didn’t like that whenever you wanted to save an image to color the next day, it lost all of your colors that you created on the color wheel. It was also a little disappointing that some of the brushes didn’t show a lot of texture. My biggest problem with Lake is that after a couple of days from downloading, it kicked you out after a couple of seconds no matter how many times you try. I would be so happy to try Lake again if you fixed this bug/error, but until then, I feel as if I have no use to spend my time on Lake, or at least trying to get it to load. Don’t feel bad about this review, I am just very picky about apps and all of their details. I notice a lot of things about them, so again, don’t feel bad. Again, I would be so happy if you fixed the bug. In the beginning it is a lovely app and it might just be my device, but my phone is brand new.

I really enjoy using the this app app. However, I am a bit disappointed with this update. While it IS aesthetically pleasing, I am a bit disappointed that many of the formerly free designs are now locked. There are an array of new designs available that are free but it’s frustrating that many of the designs that you might have been working on in the precious version are now unavailable on the free version and now locked down and you cannot access them.

In addition, if you put together a gallery in the past of all of your finished work, the gallery is now empty and you must restart again. Many of the items that were in my gallery are now locked down for the paid version and you cannot receive them without subscribing to add them to the gallery.

The spoonflower designs are always fun to do but now they are no longer free. Previously, the entire collection was available on the free version. Now there are a couple available otherwise you have to pay for the paid subscription.

this app has always been my favorite coloring app and although I use it off and on, I've been using it for years. I love the variety of templates and I love the simple coloring interface. I just recently started using it again after a long hiatus and was very pleasantly surprised with the new (to me) journaling feature! However, another new feature since the last time I used this app is all the crashing. :( It happened to me several times while I was trying to organize the art in my studio. It happened a few more times while I was browsing new templates to unlock. Finally and most frustratingly, it crashed when I clicked "done" after finishing a coloring page. When I opened Lake again, all my work was gone. I was so frustrated I don't even want to open it again to start over.

I read a few other recent reviews of Lake that also mention all the crashing. Please please PLEASE fix this issue. I love this app and was even hoping to subscribe with your Black Friday deal now that I'm using it again. But with all of these issues it's definitely not worth it, and sadly Lake is unusable.

For several weeks now I’ve been unable to access anything in “All Art” Collections. It refuses to open completely; will only show the first four books(if the artwork/covers even load on these). If I click on any collections that show, it won’t open. I can’t click on any of the other selections at the top of the page and I can’t get out of it to go back to “Hey”, “My Studio” or anything else. I have to close out of Lake completely. A few times I’ve been able to go to “All Art” and select from other subjects but now those have stopped working as well. I did an update last week and I was able to access “All Art” once before it went back to locking up. I just did the most recent update and now it still locks up and now it’s crashing completely. I can’t get in long enough to go to Support to get help. Lake has gotten so clunky. I took advantage of the discounted sub(an offer during the beginning of Covid). When my subscription runs out I’m not going to get it back. No way I would pay full(far too expensive)subscription after this experience. What a disappointment, this once favorite, has become.

I have had Lake for a while and I wanted to tell everyone how amazing it is! I love to create all kinds of art, however sometimes my mental health makes it hard to get out of bed and pick up a pencil or a paintbrush. Lake is truly amazing. I am able to color from a variety of beautiful and unique art. All of the artist on Lake are amazing!
There is a premium on Lake , but the developers understand not everyone can afford that, (me lol) so they offer so so so many free options on Lake ! There is a holiday event with free drawings everyday and it is very fun to go in and see what you can unwrap!
There is also a journal aspect to Lake , it is another way to be creative when I don’t feel creative. The journal takes you mood and creates and color pallet (suggestion) for you to use!
I love Lake and I am so proud of all the developers and artist! That was a lot, but this is a 10/10 app:)

Edit: There are some bugs and issues with the new version that I hope can be worked out soon. Social media sharing doesn’t interface well, Lake frequently clears the active coloring when saved to the gallery, and there’s no way to edit a piece that’s already in the gallery. The new interface is good, but these issues need to be solved to restore it to its previous rating in my mind.

Previous review:

I played around with what I could access for free for a bit (which is quite a lot!) before deciding to subscribe. It may seem like a hefty price tag for an app, but I’ve been following a lot of these artists and illustrators on Instagram, and watching their artistic journeys make it worth every penny of support. I’m all for supporting artists without reward, but when the reward is a really well-made app with intuitive controls and endless possibility, that’s hard to resist.

As a try before you buy person, I did really appreciate the free content and how it felt as representative of the whole product as it could be - it really lets you sink in before you take the subscription plunge and best yet - no ads!

I’ve been using it on my phone and while I might prefer a stylus and a bigger screen (and less skin oil smeared across my screen), the controls don’t feel compromised at the smaller scale, which shows forethought in its design.

Oki so I just got it yesterday and I hate it. H A T E IT. I mean, like it’s cool app, but you can’t COLOR ANYTHING. I’ve finished all the free art and I want to color more! And there’s no way I’m paying TWENTY DOLLORS FOR SOME ART SUPPLIES! I can’t wait one day for like, five pages! I’m not stupid! It’s unfair! Overall Lake has no bugs, no glitches, good pages, good tools, good colors, but it’s hard to move without recking your art! I mean seriously? 😒 I’m not deleting Lake because maybe after three more days I.l be able to wait for five pages. I wanted to do some of the “girl hero’s powers etc” ones, but noooo... buy all pages for twenty bucks! Nope. Nada. No. Never. Make it ten dollors maybe I will. Not twenty. I mean, thing of little kids?! NO KIDS ONES ARE FREE TODAY! I mean like, the pages are fine overall but still! See my point? Make a “all free test out for two weeks for people who might want to subscribe” thing or something, but please make more pages free? Thanks. 😠

This is amazing. The layout /UI is Unique and powerful. I’ve only used the free version, but it’s still a good app.
1. Everyday I login to get myself 1 more free picture.
5. There’s a really cool color wheel to choose your colors from, however it still feels kinda limited, especially the Reds, as it’s like a little blip on the wheel but blue has what feels like half of the wheel. (The paid version has a weather color wheel, so it cycles through weather palettes, but it still doesn’t look like it has more reds)
2. There are countless Artists and each of them have a free drawing.
3. There are a few categories at the top of the design that are totally free.
4. One of those categories is simply a “free” page, where you can draw whatever you like.
6. Once you finish a drawing you can put it on the gallery, but that doesn’t mean you have to delete it to recolor that piece! You can duplicate it and start over and have fun experimenting with different colors!
However, that’s one point where I’d like to see improvement. It’d be really awesome if we had access to a ‘black pen’ which sections off our page like the real artists do.
I also would like some amount of Opacity control, though that one isn’t super important simply given the style of Lake .

I wish that you didn’t have to buy the entire app like every single artist I wish that you could unlock certain artist art I love the art from some of the artist on Lake and I just feel like paying for the entire app would just be a waste of money for me that’s why I have been so hesitant about doing it I would if all of the art that was on Lake fit the style that I liked to color that I liked to interact with but it’s just not please make it a feature to subscribe to certain artist on Lake that way you can color all of their art and not have to worry about paying for art that you’re not actually going to color I love Lake and it is the only app that I have found that is amazing and really stress relieving I love the feature of getting free art every day but there are some artist that I would like to color I just can’t see myself paying for the entire app

I used to use Lake all the time, and forgot about it for a few months. I tried a few different coloring apps and this was the only one that stayed on my phone. That being said, I came back to it recently, colored for a while and when I locked my phone to do something else, 90% of the progress I made over ten minutes was gone and the picture was nearly blank. So disappointing! Later on, I was going through pages I started but never finished from a long time ago. I clicked on one I wanted to complete and it turned black. Like every section. I selected hot pink and clicked a random spot and it filled it in, it literally just filled all the spots with black and I took forever layering colors in that particular picture. There was no undo button either when it first turned black, there was no going back from that. Super disheartened that my experience coming back to Lake is dusted with disappointment when this used to be one of my favorite apps.

I got this app again recently after leaving it a year or so ago. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of new artists and the journal feature. It made coming back feel worth it.
But there are still some things that I feel are missing, and I had these same suggestions from before.
One is I feel like Lake would greatly, greatly benefit from a skin tone palette. Actually, just more palettes in general, but definitely a skin tone one. You can achieve a decent amount of colors if you “mix”, but it’d be nice to have some new and premade colors. (Especially darker skin tones!)
And the second thing is I feel like the coloring tools are still pretty basic, especially for an app you pay a subscription for. I’ve had free coloring apps with more brush types and even stamps. It’d be nice to get some new tools!
All and all, love Lake , can’t wait for updates and more artists.

Overall, this app is a great game. I love that you can see other people’s art and support them. But the amount of art you get (for free) is not fair. There are 60 coloring books, which seems like a lot, but you only get 1 coloring page for each book. It makes the number a LOT smaller when you think about preferences; my brother, for example, doesn’t want the ones with flowers or “cute” things. I don’t really want the ones with monsters and such, and sometimes I don’t like the artist’s style, the art itself, or I just don’t like a specific thing about it, which only gives me about 20 things to color— and that is about the size of a 7-year-old’s coloring book. The one-a-day coloring pages are occasionally cool, but they’re usually simple designs that don’t leave much space for creativity. I think it would be better to let you have more pages without having to pay. Maybe you could watch an ad to get a page?? Besides all that, I really do think it’s a good game.

⚙️iPhone XR user, software completely updated
🆓PREVIOUS FREE VERSION USER🆓
👍Pros:
I did unwind while drawing (in the first 3 minutes) Variety of brushes, sizes, colors, and drawings Line guide can be turned off/on Lets you type it out and identity how you feel Color variety (shades, tints, set rainbow, plus given palette) Pretty easy to figure out, didn’t take long AT ALL No internet needed Airplane mode compatible

👎Cons:
Crashes,,,like every 5 minutes of usage 🤨 This would make me lose a range of progress per drawing, the most I lost was the same 1/4th or even half, in 5 different time periods. Nothing running in the background either. Would lead to a frustrating experience, uninstalled like 12 hours into having it in my phone because of this 😩 The brushes are honestly a little too odd for me, I stuck with the fill in tool The fill in tool can ignore some lines??? Like huh? One journal entry per day 3 extra drawings per day (I think, I didn't keep it long enough)

📔Journal: Around 5 faces you can choose (sad to happy) Adjectives for why you feel this way, no max 2 drawings you can choose only 1 Color palette given to you You do not have to follow said palette When finished, it lets you look back at your older entries It also lets you type out whatever you want in an entry You can go back and edit what you typed and colored, but not what drawing, the adjectives, and smily face

Update: Like I said, below, I love Lake! It’s been a great stress reliever! And yes, it IS shareable with my family (my daughter loves it too). The drawings are wonderful and varied, the tools are fun and flexible, and I love that the subscription also goes to the artists. And there’s more! Their tech support is amazing! Highly recommended

I love Lake and so does my kid. I bought a subscription thinking we could share it, tje way we do many other apps. But after a lot of back and forth with Apple support, it turns out that we can’t share. No, actually, I can share Lake , just not the subscription. That was confusing to me, I would probably not have purchased for myself, had that been clear in the store. Otherwise, it’s a great app with the added benefit of supporting talented artists

I can’t watch to unlock locked Images. I would like that as a new person to Lake I already saw expensive subscriptions. It looks good but needs ads to unlock I wouldn’t mind a limited amount per day but having no option to unlock things with an ad is definitely worth a deduction of the rating. Heck even ads to unlock like 2 or 3 for bigger or more intricate designs would be great but so far the daily picks the only one any type of appealing to me was locked behind a paywall. Oh definitely a pay wall XD legit daily and like 6 pages are free so NOTHING I would find appealing would be free... make this a paid for app if you are going to make nearly everything paid for. Or just don’t have an app maybe make coloring books to buy but yes definitely wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. it’s a lying app that makes you pay for any type of in my opinion interesting content but leaves you with nothing if you won’t pay them for the “free” app that contains a paywall as wide as the wall of China. Only been like 5 minutes and already uninstalling.

The tools are cool. A bit like a certain well-known photo editing program, you can choose brush size and type. this app allows a truer coloring experience than most of the “tap to fill” coloring pages do. You can really express yourself with their coloring tools.

The color palette is a mixed bag. I like the way it's set up for the user to select colors from. Sort of like a cross between a digital palette and a Pantone swatch. At first, the color selection seemed amazing. But after you do a few pictures, you begin to feel limited. There are no bold colors, no "true" colors--that is, there's a carmine red but no cherry red. I’d like to see a wider range of color availability.

After giving it much thought, I became a subscriber. The quality of the art is what sold me, but I’d like to see more artists added more frequently.

I love Lake. Color in from fantastic real artists, or create your own. This is so much better than any coloring app I’ve found so far. You can fill each space, but you can color outside the lines with any width with a paint brush, artist brush, spray can OR the fill bucket. You can also prevent coloring outside the lines, or mix it up.

I would happily pay for Lake if it were affordable. I support artists with my money, especially local; but on our end, it’s still an app. In a world filled with digital subscriptions one begins to realize that they add up and quickly, so I reserve mine for work or the very special. This one IS very special, but too much, especially since I can’t indulge in it daily with demands from kids, work, aging parents, and community events.

For me, for a pleasure app, even if it supports a cause I believe in, the most I would pay per year is $40; and that would be if it were my absolute favorite.

One suggestion would be to add a purchase option to buy by the each. Then, the people like me, who love Lake but are busy and careful about digital spending, could purchase as I have time to use it. I could color one or two at a time and get more as I go.

Thank you for the superior app.

this app was a great app. It was recently updated and the for what it’s worth, the interface has changed for the better. However, things they said would not be taken away from you if you subscribed (even for a month) have now been removed and hidden behind their monthly sub fee.

Now, if you do not finish your painting and your sub runs out, the painting now becomes locked until you resubscribe. Same thing with collections that were previously free, such as Spoonflower. The amount of free paintings is now dramatically reduced as well. Overall, I’m disappointed.

If I could buy collections or even artist books that would stay unlocked as long as I purchased them, I would in a heartbeat. As it stands now, paying $8 a month (or $60 a year... what a _steal_) is a ripoff if you’re just going to take away everything from me if I can no longer pay the fee.

Lake is really beautiful. The different tools and coloring books are really gorgeous, I just hate one thing: the in-app purchases that are everywhere. I only have access to a few pages that are free, and with the new update, I can’t even go back and color my other ones that I’ve started before because now they’re locked and cost money. I wish you could just buy one coloring book instead of having to subscribe for a month or a year. In-app purchases is one of the most frustrating things on this earth for me, so if they were gone or even if they just costs less, it would be a more enjoyable experience for me. Other than that, beautiful app.

I love your game but I would like it if you could make to where the people who don’t want to pay for the subscription could earn coins. For example, when a person completes a picture they earn a certain number of coins for completing that picture. Depending on how difficult the picture is that is how many coins you get. With these coins you can unlock pictures. And you could charge money for coins. Say someone wants to buy 100 coins you could charge 2.99 for 200 coins you could charge 4.99 and so on. I feel as if this would make your app gain more money and people would enjoy your app better.

I swear, I have tried dozens of coloring apps but it truly feels more like hundreds. I’ve found a couple decent ones, most I wasn’t impressed with at all though. That all changed when I found this app. This is hands down the best coloring app available. I especially love that subscriptions and in-app purchases are an option but not absolutely necessary to enjoy Lake .

There is a wonky little thing with the color selector occasionally where I’m trying to zoom in/out or otherwise just move the screen while I have a color selected, and it will somehow switch my color. But other than that, Lake is seriously perfect.

I loved coloring with Lake. It is great for releasing my mind and getting in love with color. However, i have had 2 different paintings (out of the 3 that i worked on) not auto save correctly. There is nothing worse that having part of your art removed so then you have to start over again. I have sent an email to tech support with no response. This is the second time. The color wheel also would be great if it could have more options. The paint brush can be to fat at times for intricate works. The 2 stars is mostly for the frustration of auto save. Also, it would be good to have a tab that has “my purchases” rather than assuming that everyone has the subscription. Haven’t tried other apps, but this one is okay if you doing the painting in one sitting only.

Thank you guys for the update, even though now is a little bit less accessible for me since are more great arts for coloring but I have to buy...I can wait, not like other reviewers that state that can’t or are picky with things. (For those I recommend to use a great device, I mean good capacity to come and go from one to other task and don’t blame the developers for something that must be run by the type of “smartphone “ or tablet) So, within this weird times in our world, KEEP CALM AND STAY AT HOME coloring or playing or puzzle or well, use whatever app your device can run well. Have fun developers and users and keep safe and healthy