Art Reference: Value Study

See any photo in values, crop to your canvas, and paint side-by-side.

Art Reference: Value Study helps painters, illustrators, and traditional artists see any reference more clearly. Study values, simplify light and shadow, overlay grids, and paint side-by-side with your canvas.

A value (or tone) is how light or dark a color is. Learning to see values is one of the fastest ways to improve your drawing and painting. But it's hard to read shadows and highlights through all the color. This app makes it effortless.

SEE YOUR REFERENCE IN VALUES Instantly convert any photo to grayscale, or a 7-value posterized scale. Flick between levels of detail, start in simple black and white, then build up value by value to train your eye.

CROP & FRAME TO YOUR CANVAS Match your reference's composition and aspect ratio to your canvas before your first stroke.

GRIDLINES Overlay grids to lay in your under-sketch with correct proportions.

CURATED COLLECTIONS Don't have a reference ready? Start with dozens of hand-picked photos across Animals, Architecture, Botanical, Figure, Landscape, Portrait, Still Life, Skulls, and Master Studies from the great painters.

NO AI ART Every starter reference is a real photograph or artwork, attributed to the original artist with a link to their portfolio. No AI-generated images. And your own artwork stays private in your personal iCloud, never shared online, never used to train AI models.

WORKS OFFLINE No connection needed. Perfect for the studio, plein air, or anywhere you paint.

CLEAN, FOCUSED, NO ADS Just the reference tools you need.