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Know exactly which paints to mix.
Upload a photo, pick any color in it, and get a mixing recipe for the tubes you actually own — worked out with a spectral model that behaves the way pigment does, not the way screens do.
Works in the browser you are reading this in. Nothing to install.
7× Burnt Sienna + 2× Titanium White + 1× Phthalo Blue
…and this comes out, for the tubes you own. Off by 0.3 — closer than you can see.
Three steps, about a minute
Tick off what is in your paint box
Choose from 28 pigments for oil and watercolor. The mixer only ever calculates with paint you actually have, so a recipe is never a shopping list.
Upload a photo and click a color
Your reference stays on screen while you work, so you can pick color after color without uploading again. Or skip the photo and type a hex code.
Get the proportions, and a card to keep
Parts per tube, how far the mixture lands from your target, and warnings for pigments that will take over. Save the card as an image, print it, or share the link.
Why these recipes are different
Most color tools mix the way a screen mixes: by averaging red, green and blue. That is why they tell you blue and yellow make gray. Paint does not work like that — paint mixes in the light itself, by absorbing part of it.
Here, every pigment carries a reflectance curve across sixteen bands of wavelength, and mixing follows Kubelka-Munk with two constants, where scattering comes from the opacity of the pigment. So blue and yellow make green, ultramarine and burnt sienna make a neutral dark, and titanium white genuinely lifts a mixture instead of just fading it.
It also means tinting strength is handled honestly. A sliver of phthalo blue changes a mixture more than a generous smear of cobalt, and the recipe says so before you ruin the pile of paint on your palette.
Also in here
- Image reader. Grayscale, notan in two, three or five tones, a temperature map, a rule-of-thirds grid, the value distribution, and the palette the photo actually rests on.
- Light and value range. One slider from cool north light through neutral to evening sun. Watch what happens to core shadow, shadow, light and highlight as you move it.
- Underpainting for watercolor. The opposite color to lay down first and let dry, so the shadow gets a depth a single layer cannot give you.
- A mixing guide. Every pair of the 28 pigments worked out in nine steps, plus answers to the questions painters actually search for: skin tones, gray without black, greens that look like leaves. Have a look.
- 37 exercises across five levels and eight tracks, each with an approach, the usual pitfalls and how to tell when you are done. Nine come with a reference plate rendered for this purpose, so the light direction is unambiguous.
Your photo stays yours
Everything that happens to your reference photo happens inside your own browser. It is never uploaded, never stored on a server and never passed to anyone else. That is a design decision, not a promise: the code that reads your image runs on your machine.
Questions people ask
Do I need an account?
No. Mixing colors, reading an image, the exercises and the pigment library all work straight away. An account only exists so that your palette, your progress and your saved recipes are still there next time.
Does my photo get uploaded?
No. Your photo is read by your own browser and never leaves your device. That is also why the tool keeps working when your connection drops.
Why not just use a color wheel?
A color wheel tells you which colors sit opposite each other. It cannot tell you that two parts ultramarine and one part burnt sienna give you the exact gray in your reference, because that depends on the pigments in your own box and on how strongly each of them tints.
Which paints does it know?
28 pigments in common use for oil and watercolor, each with its color index number, tinting strength, opacity and lightfastness. You tick the ones you actually own and every recipe is calculated for that set.
How accurate are the recipes?
A recipe is a good starting point, not a finished answer. Your tube of a given pigment can differ from the reference values: brands vary, and so does the amount of binder. Every recipe shows how far the mixture lands from your target color so you know how much adjusting to expect.
Start with a color
No sign-up, no email. If you want your palette and your progress to still be there tomorrow, you can make a free account later.