Manga Colorizer — AI Comic Page Coloring

Colorize black-and-white manga and comic pages with AI while preserving the original panels, line art, speech bubbles, lettering, expressions, and composition.

Manga Colorizer is designed for creators, translators, publishers, restoration projects, and fans who have the right to process their source images. Give it public PNG, JPEG, or WebP URLs and it saves downloadable colorized files in the run's key-value store. Leave the URL list empty to run a self-contained sample. Every successful page also produces a compact dataset row for automations and AI agents.

FREE plan limit: Apify FREE users can colorize 1 picture per run. Paid Apify users can colorize up to 10 pictures per run. A FREE user who submits more than one picture receives a clear REJECTED result before any image is sent to OpenRouter, so no image-result charge is incurred.

What it produces

Field	Description
outputUrl	Download URL for the generated color page
sourceUrl	Original public image URL
outputKey	Image key in the run's key-value store
style	Applied color direction
model	Image model used through OpenRouter
resolution	Requested 1K or 2K tier
sourceWidth, sourceHeight	Decoded source dimensions
outputWidth, outputHeight	Generated image dimensions
providerCostUsd	Upstream cost when OpenRouter reports it
createdAt	ISO 8601 creation time

The dataset contains successful business results only. Download, validation, or provider errors go into the OUTPUT summary instead of being mixed into colorized-page rows.

When to use it

Use this Actor when you need to:

• colorize one manga illustration, or a batch of up to 10 pages on a paid Apify plan;
• test multiple palette directions without manually painting flat colors;
• produce downloadable image assets for an authorized comic workflow;
• connect colorized page results to Make, Zapier, the Apify API, or an AI agent.

Do not use it for private or login-protected source URLs, SVG/GIF/PDF files, more than 10 pages per run, pixel-perfect archival recoloring, or artwork you do not have permission to modify. Generative image models can occasionally alter small visual details despite the preservation prompt; review outputs before publication.

Input

Property	Required	Default	Notes
imageUrls	Yes	empty (built-in sample)	FREE plan: 0–1 public URL. Paid plans: 0–10. PNG/JPEG/WebP, at most 10 MB each
style	Yes	natural	natural, vibrant, pastel, anime, cinematic, or custom
customInstructions	No	empty	Palette or character details; required for custom style
model	Yes	Nano Banana 2 Lite	Lite is lower-cost and supports 1K only
resolution	Yes	1K	2K requires the standard Nano Banana 2 model

Example:

{
  "imageUrls": [
    "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Redirect/file/Manga_page_publicdomainq.png?width=960"
  ],
  "style": "anime",
  "customInstructions": "Cool moonlit background; keep the main character's scarf crimson.",
  "model": "google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image",
  "resolution": "1K"
}

Run through the API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/muhammadafzal~manga-colorizer/runs?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"imageUrls":["https://example.com/manga-page.png"],"style":"natural","model":"google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image","resolution":"1K"}'

Do not place real tokens in shared scripts, logs, or public repositories. Use an authorization header or your platform's secret manager in production.

Output example

{
  "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/manga-page.png",
  "outputKey": "colorized-001.png",
  "outputUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/abc123/records/colorized-001.png",
  "style": "natural",
  "model": "google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-image",
  "resolution": "1K",
  "sourceWidth": 960,
  "sourceHeight": 1168,
  "outputWidth": 768,
  "outputHeight": 1024,
  "format": "png",
  "providerCostUsd": 0.04,
  "chargeEvent": "colorized-page-lite-1k",
  "eventPriceUsd": 0.055,
  "createdAt": "2026-08-27T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

This Actor uses pay per event. Apify charges synthetic events automatically; the code does not manually charge either event.

Event	Price	Trigger
Actor start	$0.00005	Starting a run, up to the memory-based multiplier defined by Apify
Lite 1K colorized page	$0.055	Nano Banana 2 Lite, 1K
Standard 1K colorized page	$0.095	Nano Banana 2, 1K
Standard 2K colorized page	$0.14	Nano Banana 2, 2K

One Lite 1K page costs approximately $0.05505 in Actor events at up to 1 GB memory. Five Lite pages cost approximately $0.27505. A Standard 2K page costs approximately $0.14005. Failed downloads and failed generations do not trigger a page event. Each successful image and dataset row is delivered before its matching custom event is charged.

Reliability and limits

• FREE Apify users are limited to one picture per run because image generation uses the Actor owner's OpenRouter API key. Paid Apify users may process up to 10 pictures per run.
• The account tier is read from trusted Apify runtime variables. Users do not select or declare their own tier in Actor input.
• Source downloads allow at most three redirects and time out after 30 seconds.
• Local, private, reserved, credential-bearing, and non-standard-port URLs are rejected to reduce server-side request forgery risk.
• Inputs are decoded and validated before they are sent to the image model. The limit is 10 MB and 40 megapixels per source.
• Provider calls use bounded retries for timeouts, rate limits, and temporary 5xx responses.
• Pages are processed sequentially to keep cost, memory, and provider load predictable.
• Valid partial results are preserved. The OUTPUT record reports COMPLETED, PARTIAL, FAILED, REJECTED, or BLOCKED, with actionable warnings.
• The closest supported output aspect ratio is selected. Exact source pixel dimensions are not guaranteed.

The default uses the account-owned OpenRouter integration configured by the Actor owner. Users never need to submit a provider API key.

Legal and privacy

Only process images you own, that are public domain, or that you are otherwise authorized to modify. You are responsible for copyright, privacy, personality-rights, and platform-policy compliance. Public source images and generated outputs are sent to the configured image provider for processing. Avoid pages containing sensitive personal information. Generated images may include provider provenance or watermarking mechanisms.

For support, open the Actor run and share the run ID plus the redacted OUTPUT summary. Never share access tokens or private image URLs.