Paint Tester

The only app out of 3-4 that I tried that allows one to do simple flood fills based on (the well known) smart select selection tool (with a flood fill %) AND allows further touch up with a manual line or brush tool AND smartly asks if one wants to paint “everywhere” (replace color everywhere) or just “connected” or “locally”. One can quickly & easily recolor all parts of the image (walls, baseboards, doors, etc.) All other apps I tried had expensive AI subscription junk (there’s a time & place for it) or could only do realtime or only one wall or had no control over the flood fill (& could not do manual touch ups), etc. My only qualm (hence the -1 star) was: 1. the annoying snap-back to the full-zoom everytime I hit Done., & 2. One time when attempting to flood fill white baseboards with another color refused to work for some unknown reason.

I was looking for an app that would let me paint all areas of the front of our house. I have a hard time visualizing the colors the wife was suggesting. With this app we worked together and painted it up as she visualized. Some suggestions for app improvement: 1) In the Recents of the color picker, allow the user to delete colors no longer want to have as a recent (maybe long press to bring up delet option or just select a color and have a trash can appear). Trying different shades of a color makes it hard to figure out which one it was used when referring back to what you last used. 2) Also on the Recents page, have the name of the color show up at the top as it does when choosing from the color palette. Having this might eliminate having to do #1 above (but it would still be good to be able to delete) 3) have an option to delete the color number before saving a copy of the picture. When trying different colors, every single color used ends up being referenced on the saved copy, even if not all colors were used. 4) Stop having the picture going to full screen (after being zoomed in) whenever the brush size changes or when switching from bucket to brush to tap, etc. that’s a little annoying having to zoom back in. 5) have a percentage or size indicator (with number) for sizing of the brush. Hard to get it to the right size when jumping back and forth. Other than those enhancements, I really like this app. Can’t wait to see the finished product of our house...heck, we got the time thanks to CV19. 😷😉

In fairness, I am trying to use Paint Tester in for an exterior job, while I believe the program was designed with interior jobs in mind. The difference is significant. Lighting variations outdoors can be much greater than indoors, and surfaces can be more variable. Paint tester does allow you to get a rough visualization of how colors will look in a particular application and relative to other colors. It also provides a read out on the formulas ( % of various colors in each) for every color you use in your project and saves a palette, including formula information, for each project/photo. On the downside: It’s difficult to get an even coat. The color varies according to variations in the surface you’re covering. This is inevitable if the program is to preserve textures in the original, but the trade off is a very uneven look. Colors don’t remain true. Colors change in an attempt to adjust to lighting and, again, according to the color you’re trying to cover. The adjustments are not always on target. Program doesn’t always respond appropriately. On a number of occasions, while working on a photo, I’ve wanted to bring in a color from another photo. Paint Tester does not always allow this. It will pull up palettes; it will allow me to choose another color from the photo I’m working on; but it will not open and allow me to browse my photo library. Finally, Paint Tester crashes with much too much regularity, taking unsaved work with it.