About Artwingman
Artwingman was not designed at a software company's drawing board — it was born in daily studio practice. As a painter, I was tired of pushing my reference images through generic graphics programs that were never built for the needs of analog painting.
The app uses the proven Munsell color system to evaluate colors the way we painters mix them: by Hue, Value, and Chroma. Through clever AI-assisted programming, Artwingman stays extremely lean, requires no expensive cloud infrastructure, and delivers mathematical precision without data hunger.
What you can do with it
Color & Value Analysis
Measure instead of guess. Analyze every pixel in your image using the scientific Munsell system (Hue, Value, Chroma). See instantly whether your contrasts and brightness levels are correct.
Palette Extraction
Upload your reference photos or your own work. The tool filters out the mathematically pure color spectrum and creates harmonious mixing palettes for your next piece.
Paint Match (Tube Finder)
No more wrong purchases at the art store. ArtWingman compares your desired color against a digital catalog of 19,666 real artist paints from 290 premium brands and shows you the exact matching tube with a direct link.
Image Develop
Prepare your reference photos professionally. With integrated gradation curves, color corrections, and filters, you will see your subjects with fresh eyes before the brush touches the canvas.
All Tools at a Glance
The highlights of your studio pipeline
WebGL Real-Time Development
Edit your reference image like in professional RAW converters. Exposure, gradation curves, contrast or LUTs change the image without lag. The special part: your Munsell histograms, charts and keys react live to every slider movement.
3D Munsell Freedom (Hue, Value & Chroma)
Break out of rigid tables. Artwingman not only analyzes colors on a flat 2D axis (Value/Chroma), but lets you shift the hue in real time. See immediately how the harmonic relationships change.
The Bridge Builder: The Wolfe Method, Oklab & Real Pigment Physics
ArtWingman doesn’t just find the closest color — it finds the closest color the way your eye actually perceives it. The Wolfe Method runs Frank-Wolfe optimization in Oklab, a perceptually uniform color space, to calculate the exact mixing ratio of your tubes that gets closest to any target color. For a growing set of pigments, ArtWingman holds real measured spectral reflectance data (Kubelka-Munk absorption/scattering, not estimates), so mixes between complementary tubes behave like real paint on a palette knife: Ultramarine and a cool yellow genuinely mix toward green instead of collapsing into grey. Auto Palette Generator (2–24 steps): Want to paint a minimalist poster-style image or break a complex portrait into clean color steps? Generate palettes with exactly the number of gradations you need for your project with one click. Each step is immediately matched to real oil paint tubes.
Paint Match & The Integrated Crop Tool
Prepare your subject perfectly from the start. Use the integrated crop tool to choose the perfect image section. Artwingman then compares the pixels with 19,666 real artist colors from 290 premium brands and delivers exact, percentage-based mix recipes for your oil palette.
Interactive & Movable Pins
Place any number of measurement points on your subject and move them instantly. Switch seamlessly between Munsell, RGB and CMYK — perfect for painters coming from digital design who want to learn classical color theory.
Relative Value Matching (Reference Keying)
Select any pin as your central reference point. Artwingman instantly calculates the exact brightness deviation (↑+5.5 or ↓−3.8) of all other pins relative to that point. See at a glance whether the shadow in the background relates correctly to the light on the portrait.
Area Sampling instead of Pixel Guessing (up to 100 px)
A single pixel never captures the truth of a rough surface. Expand your pins to up to 100 pixels in diameter to determine the perfect mathematical average of an area. Full flexibility for every subject: Circle mode for organic forms, Square mode for precise geometric color fields, Rectangle mode (portrait & landscape) for architectural lines, horizons or targeted brush strokes.
Dynamic Munsell Keying with Real-Time Sliders
Control the color mood of your image like a director. The integrated keying system lets you visually lock your entire subject to specific Munsell ranges — extremely fast, fluid and without lag. Full slider control: determine how strictly you filter or match your image colors. Three dimensions to separate or unite: key by lightness (Value), saturation (Chroma) or pure hue. The result for painters: create instant harmonic color climate analyses. See at a glance which image areas break out of the desired mood to perfectly tune your physical mixes.
The Source Palette: Complete Image DNA with One Click
Standing in front of a blank canvas and want to start immediately? Upload your reference image and click Analyze. The highly efficient ArtWingman algorithm scans the entire subject in milliseconds and automatically creates the perfect working foundation: The 24 Core Swatches — the tool filters out the 24 most important and dominant colors that make up the image. Instant mix recipes — for each of these 24 measured color tiles you get the exact percentage of which oil tubes to mix together. The ultimate studio start: no more searching, no more guessing. Before the first brush stroke you know exactly which colors to squeeze onto your palette to cover the entire image flawlessly.
Your Palette: Your Real Tubes as a Mathematical Foundation
ArtWingman does not force you to buy new colors. The app calculates exactly with what you have at your easel. Register your inventory: simply activate the exact oil, acrylic or watercolor tubes you own. Advanced default set: a proven, versatile pro palette is pre-loaded so you can start immediately. No wish-list colors, pure practice: when you run the Source Palette, the algorithm uses only the colors from Your Palette. You only get recipes you can actually mix.
The Interactive Laboratory Color Catalog
290 premium brands · 19,666 physical color shades · continuously growing. Forget inaccurate digital color tables. ArtWingman uses real CIELAB color data to map the physical character of real artist tubes exactly in code. Our catalog is the ultimate reference work for your studio. Precision filtering: sort the entire global color range by your criteria — which binder is used (linseed oil, safflower oil, walnut oil, poppy seed oil or damar resin)? What about transparency [O/SO/ST/T] and lightfastness? Insider texts & pigment secrets: many special colors come with deeper insights. Learn immediately what makes a color special, its historical roots, or whether it is a toxic/regulated pigment. Community-powered: the catalog lives! Through an integrated feedback system you can report errors, suggest missing favorite tubes or propose new features.
Relative Temperature Slider: Warm vs. Cold in Direct Comparison
Our brain is easily fooled by color temperatures — ArtWingman is not. Instantly recognize the invisible thermal vibrations of your subject. Objective temperature comparison: move the temperature slider to visualize the warmth or coolness of a specific pixel (or up to a 100px area) in exact ratio to all other colors in the image. Perfect light-shadow relationships: see at a glance whether your shadow areas have the necessary complementary coolness to make your warm light tones literally glow on the canvas. No more optical illusions: protect yourself from the notorious simultaneous contrast in the studio. ArtWingman isolates the temperature value mathematically using the CIELAB axes and delivers the naked truth.
The Real-Time Histogram Center: Full Data Control via WebGL
End the blind flight in image composition. Monitor the mathematical distribution of your colors and tonal values through five specialized live histograms — computed without delay directly in your browser. Munsell Value Histogram: the most important tool for image structure. See instantly whether your image has a balanced distribution of light, midtone and shadow or sinks into extremes. Munsell Chroma & Hue Histograms: analyze the exact saturation DNA and hue distribution of your subject. Perfect for precisely controlling the color climate before painting. RGB & CMYK Live Curves: the perfect bridge for digital artists, concept artists and designers. Monitor color channels in real-time in the systems you are used to from Photoshop or Lightroom. WebGL-powered synchronization: move the sliders for exposure, contrast or temperature and experience how all five histograms react synchronously in absolute real-time to every nuance.