Palette & Value Finder

This tool helps you choose colours and understand the light and dark shapes in a painting. Use a reference photograph before you start, or a photograph of your own painting to check its progress.

Three useful terms

• Value (also called tone) means how light or dark a colour is. A vivid colour can still be dark.
• Greyscale shows your image in shades of grey, making those light and dark relationships easier to see.
• A value study simplifies the greyscale image into a few shades. This makes the main light, middle and dark shapes clearer.

Value is the lightness or darkness you are looking at; greyscale helps you see it; the value study simplifies it.

How to use the tool

1. Choose an image. Start with five palette colours and five value bands. These are separate settings: one controls the number of colour swatches; the other controls the number of grey shades in the value study.
2. Compare the original with greyscale. Do important shapes still stand out when colour is removed? Two different colours can become almost the same grey.
3. Look at the simplified value study. Try three bands to see the biggest light and dark shapes. Five show more variation; nine retain more detail. Use this to help plan your painting—you can change or simplify what you see.
4. Choose your colours. “Overall palette” represents the larger colour areas. “Colour variety” helps smaller, distinct colours appear. Pick a missing colour directly from the image, and lock any swatches you want to keep.
5. Take it to the easel. Mix small test swatches. Paint the main light, middle and dark areas first, then add detail. Print or download your reference to keep beside you.

If two neighbouring shapes merge in greyscale, making one lighter or darker can help separate them in your painting.

About the percentages: these estimate how much of the analysed image belongs to each colour group. They are not paint-mixing ratios or instructions for how much of each colour to use.

Worked example: Brueghel’s landscape

In this supplied reproduction, compare the dark trees on the left with the lighter sky and distant landscape. Notice the red, blue and pale clothing in the foreground. In greyscale, some colour differences become less obvious, while the pale clothing remains distinct from darker surroundings.

Load the example below and compare all three views. Start with three bands to see the broad structure, then five to examine the figures and track. Ask: which shapes remain clear without colour? In your own painting, establish those big tonal relationships before adding small colourful accents.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Landscape with Travellers and Peasants on a Track, 1610. National Gallery source. This reproduction is an educational reference, not a calibrated colour measurement.

Load this worked example