# Color Module

The Color module looks at palette and colour relationships on their own, separate from value and shape, so you can study what a photo's colour is actually doing.

## Flat Colour

Flattens the image into a small number of solid colour patches, similar to a limited-palette colour study.

![Flat Colour applied to the reference photo at basic settings](examples/color-flat-colour.jpg)

*Flat Colour at its default 12-colour palette — the autumn foliage, road, and car each settle into a small number of clean colour patches.*

- **Number of Colours** — how many colours to paint with. Fewer feels bold and poster-like; more keeps subtler shifts of light.
- **Edge Smoothing** — how much to settle the resulting shapes — higher calms jagged edges into clean masses.
- **Colour Vibrancy** — how vivid the colours look, from gentle to saturated and punchy.

## Geometric

Breaks the image into simple geometric colour regions, useful for seeing big colour relationships without the distraction of the subject's real shapes.

Includes everything in Flat Colour above, plus:

- **Shape Simplicity** — how simplified the geometric shapes are; higher gathers detail into chunkier, more graphic forms.
- **Curve Style** — how the shape edges are drawn, from crisp angular cuts to soft flowing curves.

## Illustrator 1

A flat, illustrative colour treatment with an inked outline — a bridge toward the Illustrate module.

Includes everything in Flat Colour above, plus:

- **Outline Weight** — how prominent the outline around each shape is, from none up through subtle, medium, strong, to bold.

## Illustrator 2

A more advanced illustrative colour treatment with two different ways of building its palette.

- **Colour Mode** — **Adaptive** picks the best colours across the whole image; **Banded** keeps the original's light-to-dark structure intact and colours each tonal band separately.
- **Total Colours** — how many colours to use in Adaptive mode.
- **Value Bands** *(Banded mode)* — how many tonal bands to split the image into; more bands give a finer light-to-dark progression.
- **Colours per Band** *(Banded mode)* — how many colours each tonal band can use; more brings warm/cool variety to each value level.
- **Smoothing** — how much to soften the photo before colouring; stronger gives broader, calmer colour shapes.
- **Keep Edges Crisp While Smoothing** — when on, smoothing softens flat areas but keeps the boundaries between objects sharp — best for portraits and clear subjects.
- **Minimum Shape Size** — tiny stray shapes smaller than this get folded into their neighbours, giving a cleaner, less speckly result.
- **Shape Colouring** — **Shared Palette** makes every shape use one of a fixed set of colours, like a print with a limited ink set; **True Average** lets each shape mix its own colour, which feels more painterly.
- **Show Outlines** — draws a soft dark line at the boundary between colour shapes, like a hand-drawn ink overlay.
- **Colour Vibrancy** — how rich and saturated the flat colours come out.

## Mosaic

A tiled colour-averaging study, handy for seeing dominant local colour without fine detail pulling your eye around.

Includes everything in Geometric above, plus:

- **Tile Size** — how large each individual mosaic tile is; smaller gives fine detail, larger gives chunky tilework.
- **Grout Width** — how wide the gaps between tiles are; thicker grout makes each tile feel more separate.
- **Grout Colour** — the colour of the "cement" between tiles — warm sand by default, but cool greys or charcoal work too.

## Palette Remap

Shows the photo repainted using a specific limited palette, so you can preview how a reference would look in your own mixed set of colours before touching paint.

- **Number of Key Colours** — how many dominant colours to pull from your image; fewer gives a bolder, simpler result.
- **Palette Strength** — how strongly the chosen palette is applied, from a gentle tint up to a full colour change.
- **Painting Style** — **Tint** gently washes the new colours over your image; **Repaint** replaces colours entirely; **Glaze** layers colours like a transparent oil glaze.
- **Remember Last Result** — a technical convenience that keeps the processed image in memory so switching back is instant; not a creative setting.

## How to use it

Start with **Flat Colour** to see the photo's core palette with no distractions, then try **Palette Remap** if you're planning to paint with a specific limited set of colours and want to preview the result first. **Geometric** and **Mosaic** are good sanity checks for whether a composition's colour relationships hold up once detail is removed. **Illustrator 1** and **Illustrator 2** are worth a look once you want something closer to a finished, stylised piece.