Paint Mixing

What does this tool do?

Sample any colour straight from a reference image and this tool works out how to reach it, either as a paint mixing recipe from a chosen palette or as the closest match from a coloured pencil range. It's the colour-picker end of the studio tools: where the others analyse an image, this one helps you reach for the right colour once you know what you're after.

Why artists use it

• Working out a mixing recipe for a sampled colour instead of guessing and adjusting at the palette
• Testing how far a limited palette such as Zorn can stretch across a reference before reaching for extra tubes
• Matching a sampled colour to the closest pencil in a given range, rather than hunting through a full set by eye
• Reusing the same pen or mix anywhere the same local colour shows up, which tends to bring more harmony to a piece than treating every area in isolation
• Splitting a reference into one palette per hue family (skin, lips, fabric) so each family's value string can be read on its own instead of tangled together

How this tool works

Choose Paint or Pencil mode. In Paint mode, pick a mixing preset (Zorn among them) and sample colours from your reference to get a recipe from that palette's pigments. In Pencil mode, choose a pencil library (Faber-Castell Polychromos and others) and the tool matches each sampled colour to its closest pencil. Sampled swatches can be sorted by the order you picked them, by value, or by pigment, and a live preview shows how the matched colours sit against each other. A highlight toggle shows exactly where a given swatch was sampled from on the source image. Below the swatches, a bar and a ten-step value scale show the sampled colours light to dark, each marked at its own lightness. Tick any swatches and save them into a numbered palette: they move out of the sample list, freeing their slots against the 24-sample limit, and each saved palette gets its own bar, value scale and PNG download. Sample the skin, save it as palette one; sample the lips, save them as palette two; and so on for as many hue families as the reference has.

Combine with other tools

• Use Palette Extractor first to find a reference's dominant colours, then match each one here
• Check Temperature Map alongside this so mixed colours get the temperature right as well as the hue