Choose structure rather than a filter
A filter changes how a picture looks. What a painter needs is a picture taken apart, which is a different operation. Shape Colouring builds consistent tiles and labels. Contour Painting follows the subject. Painterly mode suggests varied patches while keeping a separate contour guide underneath, so the structure is still there when the patches stop being useful.
The point of having three is that the right one depends on the painting rather than on taste. A portrait wants contours. A landscape being blocked in wants masses. A study of broken colour wants patches over a plan.
- Editable palette names and mixing notes.
- Value studies from two steps to nine.
- Hard, soft and lost edge notes.
- PNG, PDF and a full SVG export you can edit.
Plan for the real surface
Set the paper or canvas ratio before you look at anything else, because it decides which shapes survive. A guide that reads well on a screen can arrive at 20 by 25 centimetres with a third of its regions too small to paint, and finding that out after stretching a canvas is an expensive way to learn it.
The smallest effective shape is worth inspecting directly. If it is smaller than the smallest brush you intend to pick up, the guide is asking for a level of detail you are not going to paint, and the fix is fewer regions rather than a smaller brush.
Custom sizes, actual-size poster tiles and a distraction-free calibrated projector view are all included for larger work.
The same settings give the same guide
The engine is deterministic. One photograph at one set of settings produces one palette and one set of regions, every time, on any machine. Painterly mode takes a seed, so even the varied patches repeat.
This matters more than it sounds. It means a guide can be reprinted mid-painting and still match the colours already mixed, a study can be rerun at a larger size without becoming a different picture, and a setting that worked can be written down and used again.
Keep only the layers that help
A guide can produce more than one useful thing from the same picture, and taking all of them is usually a mistake. A value study answers whether the design holds. A contour drawing answers where the edges go. A painterly reference suggests where broken colour might sit. Printing all three and working from all three gives you a photograph again, described three ways.
The layer worth keeping is the one answering the question you are actually stuck on. For most paintings that is value, and it is the layer people skip because it is the least attractive to look at.
Bring an image you may use
You remain responsible for having permission to use the source, and for what you do with the guide that comes out. Pacyra does not publish the image, does not train on it and never receives it.
The examples on this site are public domain museum works and pictures made for the purpose, which is deliberate. A tool that demonstrates itself on somebody else's copyrighted photographs is not one to trust with the question of what happens to yours.