Getting started
Recipes
3 minute read, 6 steps
Trycolors turns the color you want into a paint recipe made from the tubes you own. Follow one recipe, a soft sage green, from setting the color to the finished recipe.
- Set a target color and choose your paints
- Limit how many paints a recipe may use
- Get the recipe and see how close it is
- Find it again in My Recipes
Step 1
Open Recipes
Open Recipes in the menu, or go to trycolors.com/unmixer.
Section 1 is the color you want to reach. Section 2 is the paints the recipe is allowed to use. The green button at the bottom computes the recipe.
Step 2
Set your target color
Press Change Color. On the HSV tab, drag the picker to the color you want (the slider at the bottom changes the hue), or just type its hex code. Here we typed #9CAF88. Press Confirm and the card turns that color.
The other two tabs pick the color from a photo, or from a brand's paints, for example to match a tube you ran out of. Each has its own tutorial.
Step 3
Choose the paints you own
The recipe only uses paints from your starting palette, so this is where you tell it what is on your table. The card starts with Basic: a yellow, a red, a blue, white and black.
Open the palette menu and choose Select Another Palette. Pick a ready-made palette of common pigments (Basic, Essential, Advanced), or create one from the paints you own (see My Palettes). Here we keep Basic.
With a palette of your own tubes, the recipe is for the paint on your table, not a generic one.
Step 4
Limit how many paints a recipe may use
Max Colors is the largest number of paints one recipe may use. Fewer paints are easier to mix and easier to fix. The tool already prefers short recipes when they match well, so 3 or 4 is a good setting.
Set it to 1 to find the single paint in your palette that is closest to the target.
Step 5
Get the recipe
Press Get Mix Recipe. In a few seconds the recipe opens. The band at the top shows the mix on the left and your target on the right, with the match in the middle.
Trycolors picks the paints from your palette that land closest to your target and are easy to mix. Some recipes are simple, like two paints in equal parts. Others use three or four paints, and a strong paint may need only a touch. For this sage green it chose three of the five: mostly Titanium White, some Cadmium Yellow Light and a touch of Carbon Black.
Step 6
Find it in My Recipes
When you are signed in, every recipe is saved automatically. Close the recipe window and you will find it in My Recipes, below the recipe card, ready to open again at the table.
Not signed in yet? The recipe window offers to sign in so your recipes are kept.
Now mix your own color
Set any target, choose the paints on your table, and follow the guide step by step.
Try it with this colorFrequently Asked Questions
Your palette cannot reach that color. Add a paint close to the target, often a brighter or darker tube of the same hue, or raise Max Colors.
Most acrylics dry a little darker, and a bright screen makes colors look lighter. Set your screen (see the guide Mix a recipe by hand) and judge a dry stroke.
One part is one squeeze of paint, all the same size: same tube size, same length of paint. A palette knife tip works too, as long as every part uses the same scoop.
