Mix the color you see — with the paints you own.
PaletteMix is a free color mixing tool built for oil painters. Upload a reference photo, tap any color, and get a recipe using your actual palette — with practical guidance on how to handle the mix. 36 brands. 3,397 paints. Real spectral color science. No account required.
You know the feeling.
You stare at the reference photo. You squeeze out what you think will work. You mix, scrape, adjust, mix again — and end up with a muddy pile that's close but not right. Half a tube of Cadmium Yellow gone. Forty minutes lost.
Color mixing by trial and error works fine for the colors you've mixed a hundred times. But every unfamiliar color is a guessing game — and paint isn't cheap.
What if you could start from a recipe that's already 90% there?
That's what PaletteMix does.
Pick the tubes you own. Upload a reference photo. Tap a color. Get a mixing recipe — proportions, mixing order, and warnings about tricky pigments — in seconds.
Your eye finishes the last 10%. The app handles the other 90%.
Accuracy that holds up on the canvas
Other mixing tools do math on screen colors and hope for the best. PaletteMix works the way paint actually mixes — modeling how pigments absorb and scatter light across the visible spectrum, then scoring every recipe with the same perceptual metric used in color science labs.
No mixing tool is perfect — we'll tell you exactly where the limits are. But for the vast majority of mixes in a working painter's day, PaletteMix gets you close enough that your eye can finish the job.
Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna + White
Four zones, highlight to shadow
We show our numbers — no one else does
Guidance, not just a recipe
A recipe that says "Phthalo Blue 5%, Titanium White 95%" without warning you about tinting strength is a recipe for wasted paint. PaletteMix doesn't just tell you what to mix — it tells you how to think about the mix.
Tinting strength warnings
21 pigments flagged with dosing guidance a painter can use — "rice-grain amount" for Phthalo Green, "tiny knife-edge" for Quinacridone Rose.
Interaction notes
Warnings when a recipe combines pigments that need care — like dioxazine violet going chalky in flesh mixes, or cadmiums getting gritty with certain blues.
Desaturation alerts
Warns you before you mix near-complementaries into mud. Sees the problem before you squeeze the tubes.
Mixing order
Every recipe tells you which pile to start from. Small detail, big difference in paint waste.
Yellowing preview
Shows what your mix will look like in six months if it contains linseed-oil-sensitive pigments.
Specular detection
Tapped a shiny highlight? PaletteMix warns you when the picked color is a reflection, not a mixable surface color.
Your paints, your brands, no paywall
All 36 brands and over 3,300 paints are free. Not "free for 5 brands, pay to unlock the rest." Actually free. Build a palette that matches your actual tube rack — mix brands, mix grades, whatever you own.
PaletteMix works on your phone at the easel, your tablet in the studio, or your laptop at home. It's a web app — nothing to install, nothing to update, nothing to pay for.
Built by a painter, for painters
PaletteMix started because the tools that existed either locked paints behind a paywall, only worked with one brand, or gave recipes with no practical mixing guidance.
This isn't a Silicon Valley product looking for a market. It's a tool built by Adrián González Molina, a painter who got tired of wasting Cadmium Red on bad guesses. The color science is real. The advice is real. And the accuracy data is published because painters deserve to know what they're working with.
Accuracy you can verify
| Test | Result |
|---|---|
| Chromatic gray (Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna + White) | 92% match |
| Flesh tone progression (4 zones, highlight → shadow) | 80–99% match |
| Zorn palette landscape halftone | ΔE 6.28 (physics ceiling) |
Every recipe shows its accuracy score. No other mixing tool publishes this data.
Three steps. No signup.
Pick your paints
Browse 36 brands. Tap to add the tubes you actually own. Your palette saves automatically — come back anytime.
Tap a color
Upload a reference photo or use the demo image. Tap any spot. The color is extracted instantly.
Get a recipe
PaletteMix finds the best mix from your palette — with proportions in parts, mixing order, and warnings about tricky pigments. Export the recipe card to take to the easel.
Questions painters ask
What is PaletteMix?
PaletteMix is a free, browser-based oil paint color mixing tool. Painters build a palette of the paints they actually own, upload a reference photo, tap any color, and receive a mixing recipe computed from spectral pigment data. It runs in the browser, requires no account, and works on phones, tablets, and desktops. The mixing engine uses Kubelka-Munk single-constant theory on spectral reflectance data for each pigment, not RGB approximation. Recipes are scored using CIEDE2000, the perceptual color difference standard. Full technical documentation is at palettemix.app/methodology.
How is PaletteMix different from PalettePro?
PalettePro is an iOS-only subscription app ($4.99/month or $34.99/year) that gives oil paint mixing recipes using generic pigment names like "Burnt Sienna" or "Ultramarine," so painters can substitute any brand. PaletteMix is free, runs in any browser, and gives brand- and tube-specific recipes across 36 oil paint brands and 3,397 individual paints. A painter with Williamsburg Italian Burnt Sienna and Gamblin Burnt Sienna gets different results from PaletteMix because the pigment formulations differ. PalettePro treats both as the same generic "Burnt Sienna." PaletteMix has no subscription and no account requirement. Photos are processed locally in the browser and never uploaded to a server.
How is PaletteMix different from ArtistAssistApp?
ArtistAssistApp is a browser-based color mixing tool supporting multiple art mediums — watercolor, oil, acrylic, gouache, pastel, colored pencil — and it also uses Kubelka-Munk theory for mixing. Full access to 200+ brands requires a $5/month Patreon membership; the free tier is limited to one brand per medium. PaletteMix is oil-paint-only and makes all 36 brands and 3,397 paints free. A planned Pro tier ($14.99 one-time, not subscription) will unlock features like unlimited palette size, recipe history, and batch export. Brand access is not gated. Both apps use similar color science. The real differences are scope (oil-only vs. multi-medium) and pricing model (one-time vs. subscription).
"Screen colors can't represent paint."
You're right — and that's exactly why PaletteMix doesn't rely on screen colors for mixing. The engine works on spectral reflectance data: how each pigment absorbs and reflects light across the visible spectrum. The screen only shows you an approximation of the result. The recipe itself — which pigments, in what proportions, in what order — is computed from the physics of pigment, not from pixels.
"I don't need an app to mix paint."
You probably don't — most painters mix by eye and experience, and that works fine for colors you've mixed a hundred times. PaletteMix is for the other moments: the unfamiliar color in a reference photo, the mix you've never tried, the tube you just bought and don't know yet. Think of it less as a replacement for your eye and more as a starting point that saves you from wasting paint.
"How accurate is it, really?"
Validated against real painter scenarios. Chromatic gray (Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna + White): ΔE 1.98. Schmid 4-zone flesh progression: ΔE 0.38–3.67 across zones. Dark skin (West African reference): ΔE 0.70. Zorn palette halftone: ΔE 6.28 — and the app tells you that's a palette-imposed ceiling confirmed by exhaustive grid search, not a software bug. Every recipe shows its accuracy score. Full methodology and limits are at palettemix.app/methodology.
"Why should I trust a free tool?"
Because the business model doesn't depend on hiding paints behind a paywall or selling your data. All 36 brands are free because locking out someone's tubes defeats the purpose. PaletteMix runs entirely in your browser — your photos never leave your device, there's no account to create, and nothing to install.
"What if my brand isn't listed?"
36 brands from Master's Touch to Old Holland, 3,397 paints. If yours is missing, request it — brands are added based on what painters ask for.
"Is this just another RGB color picker?"
No. RGB mixers predict light mixing — red and green make yellow on screen. In oil paint, red and green make muddy brown. PaletteMix gets it right because it models how pigments actually absorb light, not how pixels blend on a monitor.
Your next painting starts with the right color.
Pick your paints. Tap a color. Get a recipe.
Try PaletteMix Free →No account. No install. No paywall. Your photos never leave your device.