Painter's Tools vs Pochade

Paint what you see, not what you think you see. Painter's Tools turns any reference photo into a value study, a mixing recipe and a measured drawing guide, built for oil, acrylic, watercolor and gouache painters. Tap any color in your reference and get a recipe from the paints on your own palette. Squint at the big shapes. Check your drawing against the photo. All in one calm, focused studio. VALUES • Switch to a pure value view to judge light and dark without color in the way • Push the contrast to separate close values SHAPES • Simplify any scene into 2 to 8 flat value groups for a quick notan or value study • See the big masses to block in first COLOR MIXING • Tap any spot for a mixing recipe made only from the paints you own • Compare the target color with the predicted mix and see how close it is • Hold to magnify and sample exactly the spot you want • Build your palette from 12 classic pigments, including titanium white, cadmium red, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna COMPARE • Photograph your painting and overlay it on the reference • Blend between them, or hold to flash back and forth, and drawing errors jump out MEASURE AND GRID • Set your canvas size and measure any distance in inches or centimeters • Lay a transfer grid by count or spacing that matches the one on your canvas CROP TO YOUR CANVAS • Crop your reference to standard canvas sizes from 8×10 to 24×36, portrait or landscape, or any custom size BUILT FOR THE STUDIO • A dark, neutral interface that won't skew how you judge color • Designed for iPhone and iPad • No account, no ads. Your photos never leave your device. Whether you paint plein air or in the studio, Painter's Tools helps you get values, color and proportions right before the paint goes on.

**Pochade is free to try with included sample images. Unlock importing your own photos with a single one-time purchase of $9.99. No subscription, no ads, yours forever.** Pochade is a focused reference prep app for painters. Import a photo, study its values, compose your framing, and plan your grid — all before brush hits canvas. No AI generation. No social features. No clutter. Just the reference tools painters actually need, designed for iPad. STUDY VALUES WITH CLARITY The hardest part of painting from a photo is seeing the value structure. Pochade simplifies your reference into 2–9 tonal steps so you can map out your lights and darks before you start mixing paint. A live luminance histogram shows your overall tonal distribution. Select any value bucket to isolate it with a mask overlay, making it easy to see exactly where each tone falls in your composition. COMPOSE YOUR FRAMING Crop non-destructively with preset aspect ratios (1:1, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4) or use the original framing. Your source image is never altered — adjust your composition as many times as you need. OVERLAY A PLANNING GRID Add a customizable grid overlay to plan your drawing transfer. Choose your row and column count (2–12 each), pick a color that reads well against your image, and adjust line thickness. The grid respects your crop, so what you see is what you'll paint. TOGGLE GRAYSCALE Switch to grayscale to strip away color and focus purely on value relationships — the foundation of every strong painting. BUILT FOR HOW PAINTERS WORK Your sessions save automatically as you adjust tools. Come back tomorrow or next week and pick up right where you left off. Undo and redo are built in, up to 50 steps deep. A session library keeps your references organized with thumbnail previews and tool state badges so you can see at a glance what you've done with each image. Zen mode hides all controls so you can evaluate your reference without distraction. Pan, zoom, and rotate to inspect details. BUILT NATIVELY FOR iPAD AND iPHONE Pochade is built natively for iPad and iPhone. Everything runs on-device. Your photos and sessions stay on your iPad, nothing is uploaded anywhere. Privacy Policy: [link] Terms of Use: [link]