Chrooma Colors vs PaintMixLab
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Chrooma Colors
Explore the science of color with interactive tools for analysis, creation, and learning. Understand color harmonies, mix paints with spectral physics, and test your perception with engaging challenges. Features include photo palette extraction, generative art styles, and in-depth color theory explanations.
- Photo palette extraction
- Interactive color challenges
- Generative art styles
- Color theory explanations
- Spectral paint mixing
- Color comparison tools
- Offline functionality
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Play with colors. See what you've been missing. Chrooma uses real color science, not RGB shortcuts. Extract a palette from any photo and understand immediately why those colors work together: which harmonies are present, where they sit in Munsell space, what temperature balance they create. Or mix your own colors with spectral calculations that model how pigments actually behave. PHOTO ANALYSIS Pull a palette from any photo and understand it immediately: • Unlimited extraction from camera or library • Harmony detection, temperature mapping, balance analysis • Dedicated fullscreen modal with one-tap export • See what Pro analysis unlocks before you buy EXPLORE — 23 Interactive Challenges Put your color vision to the test for real. Sort Munsell value steps, identify simultaneous contrasts, reconstruct palettes from memory. Scoring uses CIEDE2000 perceptual difference. You'll discover where your perception is sharp and where it isn't. COMPOSE — 56 Generative Styles Turn any palette into shareable art. Geometric tiles, flow fields, Voronoi cells, aurora gradients, Albers-style overlays. Export as PNG or animated MP4. EXPLAIN — Color Theory You Can See 10 interactive pages: Itten's 7 contrasts, Munsell notation, Goethe's color theory, 460+ color names with etymology and history, gamut visualization, harmony rules, light physics. Not a textbook. Every concept is something you interact with. MIX — Paint Recipes with Spectral Physics Kubelka-Munk theory models how light scatters through pigment layers. Blue + yellow produces a muted olive, not bright green, because that's what real paint does. Spectral reflectance curves from 24 real pigments (Golden Heavy Body Acrylics, measured with a spectrophotometer). Separate engines for paint, light, and colorant. COLOR COMPARE Pick two colors and see exactly how they relate. Perceptual distance (ΔE₀₀), WCAG contrast ratio, harmony type, temperature delta, Itten contrasts. MORE • Gradient comparison across 4 color spaces (HSL, Lab, OKLCh, sRGB) • Color of the Day with a new curated color every morning • Weekly palettes tied to seasons and weather • Your Color Imprint, a personality profile that evolves monthly • Palette management with unlimited palettes • Works offline, no account required WHO USES CHROOMA? Painters who want to understand why their mixes don't turn out as expected. Art students studying Itten and Munsell. If you're decorating a room and need to pull a palette from a photo, it does that. And if you just want more than a hex picker, the challenges alone are worth it. PRICING Free to explore. One purchase unlocks everything. No subscription, no ads, ever. PRIVACY No account. Your palettes stay on your device. Optional anonymous analytics, adjustable in Settings.
PaintMixLab
This app helps oil and acrylic painters accurately mix colors by analyzing a photograph. It provides precise recipes using your own paint tubes, saving you time and preventing wasted materials. Get exact color matches for any shade you can capture.
- Photograph colors to match
- Precise paint mixing ratios
- Supports multiple paint brands
- Customizable paint sets
- Color sampling from photos
- Save mixes and projects
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Stop wasting paint on test mixes. Photograph any color and PaintMixLab tells you which of your tubes to mix, and in what ratio, before you touch a brush. Tap the color you want in a landscape, a portrait or a magazine swatch and get two or three tubes in whole parts, like 4 : 2 : 1, with a rating of how close the mix will be. Recipes are written for the oil & acrylic brands you actually own. HOW IT WORKS 1. Choose your paint set (or build your own from the tubes you own). 2. Photograph the color, or open a photo from your library. 3. Tap the spot you want to match. 4. Mix the recipe, check it against the swatch, paint. WHY THE RECIPES WORK Screens mix light. Paint mixes pigment, and the two behave nothing alike: blue and yellow light make grey, blue and yellow paint make green. PaintMixLab models how each pigment absorbs and scatters light across 38 bands of the spectrum, fitted to real painted swatches rather than guessed from a hex code. Every brand is calibrated separately, which is why a Winton recipe and a Gamblin recipe for the same color are different, and why both come out the color they say they will. PAINT SETS INCLUDED Gamblin 1980, Gamblin Artist Grade, Winsor & Newton Winton, Magicfly 40, Castle Arts 24, Mont Marte 24, Arteza 24, Ohuhu 24, Bob Ross 14, US Art Supply 36, and My Tubes for a custom palette. 379 paints in all, from 14-color starter boxes to 93-color artist ranges. WHAT YOU GET - Color sampling from any photo, done on your phone - Recipes in whole parts with a match rating (Excellent, Very close, Close, Approximate) - Two-tube and three-tube options, with and without white - Blocks: the dominant color masses of your photo, largest first, so you can block in the big shapes before the detail - Style studies after Van Gogh, Monet, Turner and other masters, computed on your phone, no AI - Calibrate your own tubes: paint a swatch, photograph it, and the model adjusts to your paint and your white - Save mixes to each photo and keep projects for the paintings you are working on - Calibrations sync across your devices, and any project you choose to keep in your cloud does too MIX THE COLORS PAINTERS ASK ABOUT Sage green, Payne's grey, light and medium skin tones, teal, olive, dusty rose, lavender, navy, forest green, terracotta, mustard, turquoise, sky blue, peach, cream, charcoal, neutral grey, mauve, moss, coral, rust, sand, maroon, brown, and anything else you can photograph. No more muddy greens or chalky flesh tones from guessing. WHO IT IS FOR Oil and acrylic painters first, and gouache painters use it too. Beginners get a recipe instead of a guess; experienced painters get a calibrated starting point for the colors that are hard to see, like greyed greens and shadow skin tones. YOUR PHOTOS STAY ON YOUR DEVICE BY DEFAULT Color sampling happens on your phone and the picture stays there. If you turn on Keep a copy in your cloud for a project, that project's photo and swatches are stored privately against your account so you can open it on another device. Switch it off or delete the project and the copy is removed. We never view, share or use your photos for anything else. HONEST ABOUT ITS LIMITS A recipe is a starting point, not a guarantee. Tube batches vary, paint thickness changes a color, and the light you paint under is not the light you photographed in. PaintMixLab gets you close enough that the last adjustment is a small one. FREE GUIDES paintmixlab.com has free recipes by color and guides on mixing greys, skin tones, why greens go muddy, complementary pairs, tinting strength and how to measure ratios in parts. SUBSCRIPTION PaintMixLab Pro is $3.99 per month, with the first 3 days free. The subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel it in Settings > your name > Subscriptions. Terms of use: https://paintmixlab.com/terms-of-use/ Privacy policy: https://paintmixlab.com/privacy-policy/
Screenshots
Verdict
Chrooma Colors and PaintMixLab are too close to call on the numbers: across 9 compared parameters — price, rating, ratings volume and update cadence among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Chrooma Colors sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and PaintMixLab sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Chrooma Colors against 5.0 for PaintMixLab. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.
Chrooma Colors ships an update every 11 days, PaintMixLab every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Chrooma Colors | PaintMixLab |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 11 days | Every 9 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 53 MB | 30 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Julien Brun | Jason Ehleben |
In-app purchases
Chrooma Colors
- Chrooma Colors Pro$6.99
PaintMixLab
- PaintMixLab Pro3 Days trial$3.991 Month
Questions
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