Palette Composer An Artist's Aid to Colour Mixing

The Palette Composer makes colour mixing easy without the need for colour mixing tables or charts.

This app is the perfect companion for artists. It is especially useful for those artists who sometimes need a little help with mixing paint colours, by giving them a selection of colour mixing solutions they can use to match a colour in the picture they are painting. Each solution uses only colours the artist has in their palette.

It can be used for mixing all sorts of paint types, including watercolour, acrylic, and oils. It also helps colour mixing with many other mediums such as pastels, watercolour pencils, etc.

It not only tells you which colours to mix, it shows you how the mix should look after each colour is added, giving you a step-by-step guide to creating your chosen colour.

If a colour cannot be matched closely enough for you using the colours in your palette, you can ask it to mix the colour from a catalogue of colours to suggest new colours you should add to your paint collection.

Colours can be added to the app's palette either by selecting pre-defined colours from a catalogue or by defining new colours, using both Red Green Blue and Cyan Magenta Yellow colour models. You can create your own catalogues by importing colours from an image of your colour samples.

Edit the app's default palette to match the paints in your collection. 

Start your project by selecting an image of the picture you want to paint. You can also frame it to match your canvas dimensions and add a grid over the image to help draw it. 

When you touch a colour in the picture, the Palette Composer will search your palette of colours and select those needed to mix the selected colour. It will select up to 15 mix solutions and show them in the mix result panel.

For each mix solution found, the mix result panel gives an indication of the proportions of each colour to use and the result to aim for, as each colour is added to the mix, enabling you to mix colours with more confidence. 

Note: Some solutions may give a better result than others, so always try the mix prior to applying to your artwork. This is especially important when using mediums that are blended on the artwork.

When you have mixed one of the suggested solutions, and you are happy with the result, you can tell the Palette Composer that you have mixed this colour on your palette board, enabling the app to use it for mixing other colours. Solutions that use colours it knows are on your palette board are prioritised in the results screen, helping to reduce paint wastage.

A generic catalogue has been provided within the Palette Composer, containing a selection of standard artist paint colours. It should be noted that differences in these colours can occur across the different paint manufacturers. We have found small differences do not usually have a significant impact on the result. However, if you find some discrepancies, you can import your own colours into your own catalogues by using the 'Import Colours from Image' function. After creating your own catalogues, they can be exported to external files and shared with your friends, family and students.

Happy colour mixing. The mystery is solved - now enjoy the magic!