0 Items in your cart
PowerPalette
The Power Palette is a fantastic aid for miniature painting! Upload an image, then click inside it; the Power Palette will give you the Master Series Paint color or colors it thinks are either close matches to the point you chose or colors you can mix together to get a great custom color! While, obviously, pictures of miniatures themselves would be useful, any picture is fair game; find a paint match for your favorite sports team, a skin tone from an alien in your favorite movie, or whatever else you can imagine! After around ten minutes of inactivity the picture will be removed off our server, so if it times out simply re-upload and get back to clicking! Note that all images must be JPEGs, GIFs, or PNGs and under 300KB in size. Further questions may be answered by the handy-dandy FAQ at the bottom of this page.
Power Palette Frequently Asked Questions and Instructions!
- Introduction
- What is the Power Palette?
- Am I allowed to load an image from [insert source here!]?
- What file types and sizes are allowed?
- I have a part of the picture I want to sample from, but it's too small in the Power Palette, what can I do?
- How to Use the Power Palette
- How do I upload a file from my computer?
- How do I upload an image from another website?
- How do I load an image from the Inspiration Gallery?
- How does the Power Palette work?
- How can I tell where I'm clicking on the image?
- Why does the image in the ViewFinder look funny?
- What are the colors in the "Results from Last Click" box, and how are they chosen?
- What is the "Best Calculated Match"?
- What are the "Last Ten Best Matches"?
- What are the +'s, x's, and arrows?
- Ok, so I know what all the parts are, but how do I use and interpret it all?
- I don't think these colors are right, or they don't match the ones I know I used on a mini, how is this possible?
- Why do I have to keep uploading the same image over and over? Can't you just store them on your server?
- The color swatches are too small, how can I see the color easier?
- I had a paint in my Stored List that is no longer there, what gives?
- I really like this tool, but I use a non-Reaper paint line, are there plans to add other paint lines in the future?
- Why can't you just have the system figure out exact colors to mix together to get shades not in your paint lines?
- Why does the Inspiration Gallery only have a "Lite" version?
Introduction
- What is the Power Palette?
- Am I allowed to load an image from [insert source here!]?
- What file types and sizes are allowed?
- I have a part of the picture I want to sample from, but it's too small in the Power Palette, what can I do?
How to Use the Power Palette
- How do I upload a file from my computer?
- How do I upload an image from another website?
- How do I load an image from the Inspiration Gallery?
- How does the Power Palette work?
- How can I tell where I'm clicking on the image?
- Why does the image in the ViewFinder look funny?
- What are the colors in the "Results from Last Click" box, and how are they chosen?
- What is the "Best Calculated Match"?
- What are the "Last Ten Best Matches"?
- What are the +'s, x's, and arrows?
- Ok, so I know what all the parts are, but how do I use and interpret it all?
- I don't think these colors are right, or they don't match the ones I know I used on a mini, how is this possible?
- Why do I have to keep uploading the same image over and over? Can't you just store them on your server?
- The color swatches are too small, how can I see the color easier?
- I had a paint in my Stored List that is no longer there, what gives?
- I really like this tool, but I use a non-Reaper paint line, are there plans to add other paint lines in the future?
- Why can't you just have the system figure out exact colors to mix together to get shades not in your paint lines?
- Why does the Inspiration Gallery only have a "Lite" version?
The Power Palette is an automated tool to help you find the perfect colors to paint your miniatures! While you can obviously load up a painted version of any mini from anywhere on the web or your computer, you can do much more! Load up a character from your favorite movie or online game to see what colors you could use to paint a model like them! Find pictures of military units or vehicles to find the right shades for your historical pieces! Find new possibilities for painting skin tones by loading up... hand models! For those of you with color vision deficiencies, find color combinations for the hues you have a hard time seeing! Like another company's game, but want to use Reaper paints on their models? Say no more!
The images loaded up in your Power Palette view are hidden from the world, even us! They only live on our server for ten minutes after the last time you click on them in order to protect your privacy, allow you to look at any image from any source without fear of violating a copyright or trademark (since we're pretty sure nobody "owns" a color), and to keep our server from getting too full.
When you upload a file or link one from another website, please ensure it is a JPEG, GIF, or PNG, and that it is under 300KB. The Power Palette system already resizes the images to a maximum dimension of 500 pixels, so larger pictures are not inherently better in the system. If there is a picture you really want to look at that doesn't fall into these requirements, simply save it to your computer, make the necessary adjustments in your favorite graphics program (such as Photoshop or GIMP), and upload it directly!
Because the Power Palette operates on a pixel-by-pixel basis (magic squirrels and hyperintelligent quantum singularities were too pricey) smaller details can be harder to pick out. If you have a version of the image that is larger than 500x500 pixels, simply crop the original image to focus on the part you're interested in, and upload that particular area. Very small details, such as eyes, gems, etc. are already interpolated by computers on a pixel-by-pixel basis that makes them look clear on a screen but obfuscated when enlarged or zoomed-in on; the Power Palette will not be as precise when trying to get accurate readings over very small areas.
Below the Power Palette box should be a File Select field; different browsers will name and display them differently, but it should be some variation of "Choose File". Clicking on that button will open a File Browsing Dialog box appropriate to your operating system. Navigate to the file you want to upload, hit OK (or whichever variant your system has), and then press "Upload Image Source". Note that files should be in the JPG, GIF, or PNG format and close to 300K in size.
There are two different ways to upload an image from another website. The first would be to right-click on the image you are interested in (or the equivalent of a right-click on your Operating System of choice), save the image to your computer, and then upload the file as stated in the previous paragraph. The second method would be to right-click on the image and select "Open image in new tab", or whatever equivalent name you have in your browser of choice. You can copy the entire address (http://-whatever) and paste it into the "Paste a link to a picture" field, and then hit Upload Image Source. If the file is of the right type (GIF, JPG, PNG, 300K) and our server gets along with theirs, the image will be uploaded into the Power Palette. If, for whatever reason, it does not work, you can always fall back to the first method of saving it to your machine and then proceeding.
If you would like to use the full version of the Power Palette on an image from the Inspiration Gallery just go to the expanded view and click on the link under the "Power Palette Lite" area.
When you place your mouse over the image you should see the cursor change to a crosshair. Simply click on the image and the Power Palette goes to work, sampling the colors around the point you clicked and figuring out the closest matches to them in Reaper paints.
There are three ways for you to tell where you are on the image itself. The first one is the mouse cursor; as you move it across the image you should be able to line up the crosshairs on the part of the image you want. The second is the X/Y coordinates box, which keeps track of where the mouse is, and allows you to fine-tune your aim. The third one is the ViewFinder next to the X/Y coordinates which offers you a zoomed-in view of the spot your mouse is hovering over.
The zoomed-in image in the ViewFinder is not just the original image zoomed in, but is actually the original image color-shifted to match the various Reaper paint colors. We decided to use the color-corrected zoom rather than the original image to give you better feedback on how the computer "sees" the image and to give you a better idea of where the results you see originate from.
Rather than just sample one pixel, which may or may not be close to the "average" color of an area, the Power Palette first looks at all of the pixels in the area surrounding the spot clicked on, calculates averages based off an algorithm, and returns up to four colors it perceives as occurring the most often around the point selected. Note that due to picture quality and the complexity of the miniature these colors might be very similar or very different from each other; every one of them could be used in part or whole to obtain the hue and saturation of the area clicked on.
After the system calculates possible matches from around the point clicked, it then samples a much larger area to get a better average color from the point clicked on. The Best Calculated Match is often a color that appears in the Results from Last Click, but not always. The Best Calculated Match is the system's calculated best match of all of the colors in the local region most likely to give the color desired.
As you click on an image the Power Palette will keep track of the last ten colors from the Best Match box for you. If you happen to click on a color that's already in the list it will be moved to the top.
The [+] next to a color will send that color to your shopping cart; if you find a color you really, really like, we thought we'd be nice enough to not make you hunt all over the store for it. The right-pointing arrow moves the paint swatch to your Stored List, which is a list of colors saved in a cookie on the machine you're currently using; if you come back to the site at a later time the saved colors will be there, and if you have multiple Power Palette windows open, the list can be updated by any of them. The [x] in the Stored List removes that particular paint from the Stored List.
Excellent question! While the Power Palette system will never be as nuanced and powerful as a human brain with one or more eyes attached, it can still be a great aide to painters of all skill levels! When you click on a spot in an image, not only will the Best Match give you a pretty close approximation of the color in that area matched to a paint swatch, but the Results from Last Click will offer up many more suggestions. Even if the Results are not exact matches, they may give you new ideas on how to utilize some colors, show you paints you weren't aware of, and help you think about how colors interplay with each other more.
One way to use the tool, besides randomly sampling different areas, is to focus on one area in particular. If you want to get ideas on how to paint a blue cape, load up an image of a mini with a blue cape, a person wearing blue cloth, etc. Starting from the brighter highlight areas, click across a range of blues until you get to the shadows; in the "Last Ten Best Matches" box should be several blues of different hues, brightness, and intensities to choose from. You can then use your painter's eye to pick out the three or four colors you think would work the best together and go from there, or even pick the dissimilar ones from the list to try something new.
The Power Palette, first and foremost, will never be as sophisticated as the human eye and brain; because it's a computer program interpreting an image, it will only be as good as the picture was in the first place. While most people can unconsciously adjust their color perception if a photograph is too blue, oversaturated from bright lights, or any of the other hundred things that can go wrong with macrophotography, the Power Palette can only work with the pixels given.
The second major reason colors may not appear to be the right results to you is the fact they are being matched to a paint line with a limited number of colors. Because the current version matching Master Series Paints does not have a perfect match for every hue, much less saturation and value levels, some colors will be more difficult to match. Bright pink colors, for instance, will render as off-white in the system rather than pink. While not being an optimal match by far, it will at least give you ideas on brighter colors to mix with reds in order to get the desired colors; the same can be said for light greens, purples, etc.
The third reason the colors may not look quite right has to do with computers, monitors, and how they display colors. Depending upon your video card, monitor type, calibration, and a host of other concerns, colors on a computer screen can vary greatly from machine to machine. We here at Reaper spent a long period of time calibrating our color swatches on a monitor and system to give the best possible match for the color on screens (matching colors for print purposes is another animal entirely) using genuine web-monkey know-how and the freakish mutant color-matching abilities of Anne Foerster, paintmaster extraordinaire and the person who mixes MSP's in the first place. Because the system translates the colors consistently in the various color "modes" usable by computers, the precision of the exact color is a bit less important than ensuring the differences between colors are the same. Without going into the calculus involved in color coordinate systems, please believe we put our utmost effort into calibrating and tuning the system to the point we felt it gave the most consistent, useful, repeatable results.
And, as an addon, everyone knows where the Painting Tips and Advice forum is, right? If you're ever really unsure or want confirmation on color choices you can always go there as well (though you might want to tell them you already tried the Power Palette, just to let them know).
Because we firmly believe the Power Palette may be one of the Greatest Online Tools for Miniature Painting People Never Knew They Wanted, we anticipated the need to limit the lifespan of files to ensure we didn't have to start reading up on server farms or figuring out the most exabite for the buck. Also, we wanted to ensure everyone was comfortable using any image their imagination was sparked by; because we don't keep them you have no privacy issues to worry about. The timer for how long your image "lives" on the server is pushed back when you click on the image, so if you want to not have to reload as often, give it a click every now and again. We tried to make the upload process as streamlined as possible to lessen the annoyance factor.
If you hold your mouse over a color swatch you should see the cursor turn into a hand or pointer; clicking on the swatch will pop up a much larger swatch with more information. Future upgrades to the tool will give you more information about the color itself and the triad it belongs to, along with handy links to add them to your cart. To get rid of the popup, simply click elsewhere inside the tool, or on a different swatch to see information about it.
When you access the Power Palette it checks the paints you have stored to ensure there are not any paints in your list that are no longer available, or have temporarily run out of stock.
While we at Reaper are of course particularly fond and enamored of the paint lines we produce and use, we know that not all paint lines will conform perfectly to everyone's style, and that there are other popular paint lines out there. However, we have no plans to adapt the Power Palette to return results from other paint lines. There are several equivalency charts and websites already on the internet that can be used to quickly find rough matches between different lines, you can go to forums such as Painting Tips and Advice on our site to ask for color matches, and, of course, there are several technical and legal concerns with matching a paint line that's not inherently ours.
The less professional answer, of course, is "This is our toy, neener neener!" *ahem*
This is actually a fairly common question that has been around for years with the color-picking tools of graphics programs. The reason why mixing paints according to the same ratios a machine would calculate to display a color will not work is the difference between how colors are produced on a computer screen and how pigments react chemically to produce color in paint (which is also different from how printers mix ink to produce different colors). For instance, mixing yellow pigment with traditional "black" pigments will often result in a green. Computers utilize "RGB", or "Red, Green, Blue" color spaces to produce colors. Printers use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) to obtain different spectrum. Even if we did have the qualitative chemical analysis to accurately predict how pigments interact and built a computer model of it (I'm guess a couple of mass spectrometers would do the trick, along with a Master's in Chemistry), because of the vagaries in the actual mixing of paint, storage life of different pigments, and countless other variables, it still wouldn't be a workable system.
Besides, mixing paint yourself and figuring out the finer details isn't all that scary! :)
Because of the complexities in a dynamic image gallery such as the Inspiration Gallery, there comes a point where too much is being attempted in too small of a space on a web page, leading to it working on fewer and fewer platforms. The Lite version of the Power Palette still gives you the same Results and Best Match as you would get from the full version of the Power Palette; clicking the handy link under the Lite version quickly gets you to where you can automatically save the last ten Best Matches and add paints to your Saved list.
