PaintSteps vs Mix Therapy

Turn any photo into a practical, step-by-step painting guide. PaintSteps simplifies your reference into progressive color stages, helping you see what to paint first and what to add next. Choose your medium and painting order, then work through the image, palette, and mixing guidance at your own pace. CREATE FROM ANY PHOTO - Choose an image from your photo library - Crop and position it for your canvas - Adjust colors, steps, smoothing, and canvas ratio - Build dark-to-light, light-to-dark, or balanced PAINT WITH CLEAR GUIDANCE - Follow progressive painting steps - Use color numbers and an adjustable drawing grid - Pinch to zoom while guides stay aligned - Press and hold to compare with the original photo TRACE WITH LINE ART - Turn your painting into an outline drawing to transfer onto the canvas - Choose the level of detail, or let Auto pick a step that's easy to trace - Add a drawing grid and color numbers, then print it or share it as a PDF or PNG - With Pro, choose thin, medium, or bold lines MIX COLORS - View practical paint-mixing suggestions for every palette color - Choose from built-in paint sets - With Pro, use your own paints and palettes, calibrate tinting strength, and edit recipes SAVE AND EXPORT - Keep your painting projects in one library - Export complete PDF tutorials, including the line art page, or individual PNG step images with Pro The free version includes up to two saved paintings, tutorials with up to four steps, and line art. PaintSteps Pro unlocks unlimited paintings, up to eight steps, custom paints and palettes, recipe editing, export, and line art thickness. PaintSteps Pro is a one-time purchase. No subscription. Mixing results are estimates. Always test a small mix before painting.

Turn a color from a reference photo into a practical acrylic mixing recipe built from the paints on your table. Mix Therapy is an offline acrylic paint mixing notebook for artists. Choose a HEX target or sample a color from a photo, select the tubes you own, and compare three starting recipes. Then make a small swatch, let it dry, and use Mix Check to see how the real paint differs. FROM REFERENCE TO RECIPE • Sample a target color from a photo on your iPhone or iPad • Extract a compact five-color palette • Search the built-in acrylic catalog by paint name, brand, or pigment code • Add custom tubes using your own dry swatch • Generate recommended, simpler, and alternative routes • Measure ratios as Parts or convert them with a clear Drops per Part setting • See whether an estimate is lighter, darker, more muted, more intense, or shifted in color bias • Discover one paint-kit opportunity when another pigment meaningfully improves the digital estimate CHECK THE REAL PAINT Screen color and physical pigment are not identical. Photograph your dry swatch beside a matte near-white reference. Mix Check corrects the lighting, compares the swatch with your target using Delta E, and suggests one controlled adjustment from the paints you selected. Record the paint and ratio you actually used, then measure whether the next dry swatch got closer. YOUR STUDIO NOTEBOOK • Save, reopen, rename, duplicate, and share recipes • Export a recipe card as PNG • Back up or restore project data and available reference photos in a versioned archive • Build a local calibration history from verified dry swatches PRIVATE BY DESIGN Reference and swatch photos are processed on your device. The current version requires no account and includes no advertising or analytics SDK. IMPORTANT Mix Therapy provides digital starting estimates, not guaranteed pigment formulas. Results vary with brand, pigment chemistry, opacity, medium, surface, lighting, paint batch, and acrylic dry shift. Always test a small swatch and let it dry before scaling an important batch.