Value Study vs Palette Pal

In art, value (or tone) refers to how light or dark a colour is. If you're learning to paint or draw, doing value studies is one of the best ways to improve. These small, loose sketches in greyscale help you understand where shadows fall and highlights appear—essential for capturing depth and form. Value Study is a simple, focused tool designed to help you see values more clearly in your reference images. Instead of just converting a photo to black and white, this app lets you break down tones step by step. Start with just black and white to map out the biggest shapes, then gradually add more values to refine your understanding. You can also highlight all areas of an image that share the same value, making it easier to see subtle shifts in tone. This is especially useful in complex references, like portraits, where different parts of the image might have the same level of shadow but look completely different in colour. Value Study isn’t here to replace traditional studies—it’s here to enhance them. Whether you're sketching, painting, or working digitally, this tool makes it easier to focus on the fundamentals of light, shadow, and form. Try it for free with all features enabled on sample images from Unsplash before deciding to unlock the full app with a low-cost yearly or lifetime purchase. All Value Study Pro upgrades count as lifetime purchase. Either option will unlock Value Study across iPhone, iPad and Mac. Annual: Auto-renews yearly. Lifetime: One-time payment, no fees. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Palette Pal empowers artists with color mixing guidance and palette management. It turns any photo into a palette, then tells you how to mix those colors with the paints you actually own. Made by artists, for artists. Prep less. Paint more. BUILD YOUR PAINT BASE Add the paints you own from real brands (Daniel Smith, Schmincke, Winsor & Newton, Golden, Liquitex, Gamblin, Michael Harding) across watercolor, oil, acrylic, and gouache. Can't find a color? 61 standard shades are matched across major brands, and paints sharing a pigment code mix almost identically. Recipes then use only what is on your palette, not a generic set. REAL MIXING, NOT SCREEN COLOR Mixing is simulated with the physics of how pigments absorb and scatter light, so a recipe behaves like paint rather than like a color picker. Where using one more tube genuinely gets you closer, you get both a Simple and an Accurate version and can choose. SCORE YOUR MIX Painted a swatch? Photograph it. Palette Pal scores it against the target and tells you what to correct, lighter, cooler, needs a touch of Burnt Umber. Adjust, shoot again, watch the score move. GENERATE AND STUDY Pull 5, 10, 20, or 40 colors from any photo. Edit any swatch, pick a color by eye, and read the exact hex. Keep projects in folders and finished palettes in albums, so the work you did last month is still there when you need it. CHECK THE HARMONY See how a palette holds together before you commit: value range, which family leads, warm against cool, quiet against loud. A general check, not a rule. Your painting decides. MIX MAP Mix a whole palette faster. Mix Map groups your colors by what mixes from what: mix a mother color once, keep some of it, and add a touch of one or two paints to reach the next color. Fewer tubes, less time, and colors that sit together naturally. Colors that need their own mix are listed separately. PREP BEFORE YOU PAINT Every project lists the paints to squeeze, must-have and nice-to-have, so you set out your palette once and start painting instead of hunting for tubes. EXPORT Save a palette as an image in five layouts, ready for your notebook, your studio wall, or a client. SYNCS ACROSS YOUR DEVICES Sign in and your projects, palettes, and paint base follow you. Or use it as a guest, everything works locally. FREE Generate palettes from photos, edit and pick colors, keep up to 10 projects and 10 saved palettes, sync across devices. PRO Full paint mixing recipes, mix map, mix scoring and comparison, palette harmony check, your own registered paints, unlimited projects and palettes, and every Pro feature we add. SUBSCRIPTION Palette Pal Pro is an auto-renewable subscription. - Monthly: $6.99 per month - Yearly: $39.99 per year, including a 7-day free trial for new subscribers Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. The subscription renews automatically at the same price unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel it any time in your Apple Account settings. Any unused part of a free trial is forfeited when a subscription is purchased. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://palettepal.app/privacy