Feature Request: Mixbox True Pigment Mixing

[Khairul Hamdan]

Currently the colour mixing in Adobe Photoshop is not true to real life (e.g. blue plus yellow makes a cream colour instead of green). I would love to see Adobe impliment a system like the one found here:[link removed as per forum guidelines]

It would improve the product greatly and keep Photoshop above the competition for digital artist.

[bobzilla63]

I tried using a plugin called Mixoos a few years ago, but it was a little awkward and I don't even know if it works with newer PS versions. It was a paint mixing palette similar to what Painter uses. It used somehting similar to PS Mixer Brush, but it had it's own set of tools. Nice idea, but too much back and forth between PS tools and Mixoos tools. And, I could never figure out how to set up hot keys for it.

Bob

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, as a publicly traded company, Adobe employees can't comment on upcoming features.

Explaining how the current painting engine does not let you achieve the results you want is the best one can do so far!

[Michał26002763l9yg]

Side note: in February it'll be a year since the first post. I wonder what is the average time for the request to be implemented, because a year seems pretty long. 

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, not all requests are fulfilled, and some have taken years, some never became an actual feature, as the team has to decide on priorities.

[PECourtejoie]

Hi, are you a traditional painter? Is there a given technique that cannot be replicated today, but could with this method?

I understand that it would be nice to replicate how traditional pigment mixing behaves, but what I have not seen often are digital painting classes that are catered for traditional painters, and would give workarounds. 
For instance I imagine a request for a way to reveal images the same way Photos are developed in a darkroom, but I fail to see what advantages it could bring.
Is the request more to create intermediate tones on a traditional palette, or rather on canvas?

[PECourtejoie]

Sorry, I wanted to let you know that I had edited my answer, with more questions.

[davescm]

As is stated earlier in this thread, Adobe staff do not comment on whether or not features will be included in future releases.

Repeating the same request does not lead to that changing.

Dave

[bobzilla63]

I think the problem is, Photoshop is so complex in it's abilities, that adding a feature that may only please a small part of one group, mainly painters that are used to traditional painitng methods, is not on the top of Adobe's list...understandably. The apps that have the ability ot mix paint traditionally are dedicated painting apps, so it makes sense in those conditions.

But, it would be nice if Adobe added it at some point.

Bob

[PECourtejoie]

as I posted yesterday: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-ideas/feature-request-mixbox-true-pigment-mixing/...

[alexandrap1502541]

[Link removed by moderator]

this plugin allows digital painters to mix digital pigments more accurately and beautifully. It would make my digital painting process smoother and more enjoya

[davescm]

@alexandrap1502541 I've merged your post with an existing thread on this subject

Dave

[Irise Flow]

Maybe there could be a way to turn this feature on and off, just like the line smoothing add-on. My biggest concern is if this new blending mode will affect the speed of the brushstrokes or not. If they can find a way to make it work smoothly, then it would be a significant enhancement for painters. 

[manu901able.37974972]

Implementing mixbox to photoshop is not only a good thing for traditional artist, most digital artist have to spend time adding colors (cause mixing without mixbox makes the resulting color creamy) they have to change saturation when mixing colors beacuse of this, that makes workflow slower, THAT is a fact that concern every user

[Jebik]

It really bug me that mixing blue and yellow don't give green like in real life so i take 2 hour asking chat GPT for solution and the closest i have now is stopping my photoshop subscription and buy instead rebelle6 one that include this feature.
I know photoshop is more about editing photo than drawing since the dawn of time. But it's really sad this does not implement this feature (I mean True Pigment Mixing not specifilly mixbox one version).
For real life painter it's really a nice one. I know you can use color picker to use the color you wan't but it's not how painting work.

I guess as painter are not that many we will not see this feature any day soon and for painting photoshop is just not the right tool to use. I think mixbox licensing is not good for adobe as it force them to take a commercial licence that price is not set. So this means photoshop dev should add their own implementation of realistic brush mixing using pigment color RYB. I never yet use adobe Fresco is it more suited to painting? Does it have a similar mixing feature or not?

[bobzilla63]

Rebelle, Art Studio Pro, Paintstorm, ArtRage, all have true pigment mixing. So, it can't be that hard to implement. Rebelle is on sale right now so I bought a copy.

Bob

[Anna Katrin Caiado]

I jsut tried in ( MiX BOX ) [link removed by moderator] online -  can you implement the code in Photoshop, please ? well,,, they say is that simple - anyways, photoshop would be awesome with this 

[terryscotteubanks]

I did not believe adobe has any interest in incorporating a Kubelka-Munk (RGB Mixbox) model for paint mixing. I will continue to use photoshop for what it is best at, but Rebelle 6 (link removed by moderator) has both Pigment Color Mixing and NanoPixel Technology!

Practical Pigment Mixing for Digital Painting (Research Paper)

[Link removed by moderator]

Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Czech Technical University in Prague

[jane-e]

@Anna Katrin Caiado 

I've merged your post with this thread.

Jane

[NezzaNox]

I'm just posting to say at least for me there is still merit and personal interest in seeing this come to photoshop. When it comes to my primary workflows in making concept art, photoshop is unmatched, but unfortunately, it's' color mixing and brush engine, in general, is lacking even in comparison to clearly photoshop inspired tools like artstudio pro. I think having mixbox as an option would make photoshop a much more well rounded software for painters like myself, where I find myself sacrificing the rich colors I could be getting in software that has implemented mixbox for the myriad of addons I have that make working in photoshop so much faster than another software.

[bobzilla63]

I have BEGGED the developers of Art Studio Pro to make a few adjustments to make it easier to use on desktop, but I rarely get an answer. It's so close to being pretty much a perfect painitng software. It handles Photoshop brushes nearly flawlessly. The real pigment and wet brush technology are great.

Adobe should at least be able to add the real pigment ability. At the very least, update the Mixer Brush tech. All it really does, at best is blur or smear pixels. Nothing really "mixes".

I've gone from using Photoshop as a retouching app for many years to a painting app, so the shortcomings are glaring now.

Bob

[kygelo]

The Mixer Brush doesn't behave like real pigments supposed to in many cases.
For example, simply mixing most obvious colors, like Hansa yellow and Ultramarine blue gives bronse *.

Photoshop RGB has known issues handling darker shades (as in Color Replacement tool).

But even using lighter shades, when mixing, the saturation is reduced - again not how natural pigments are supposed to work.

Here resulting in dull greens and dirty violets as illustrated by Kyle Webster in Photoshop for Artists: Working with Color in Photoshop with Kyle T. Webster .

The issue is most elloquently descirbed by Kyle in Photoshop Brush Top Tips and Tricks.

Problem we're working an RGB. RGB has one fatal flaw, and that is greens. When you mix a blue and a yellow in RGB you usually get kind of a grey, okay. And I'll show you the workaround ...

Here's my blue here's my yellow and there's my greeeen ?! -- right, terrible!

RGB math just doesn't work in the green part of the spectrul and with darker shades. To work properly, mixing must happen in a different color space, where Hue, Value and Saturation are distributed more evenly.

That is the purpose of this feature request: so we don't have to interrupt the natural mixing with workarounds, which involves reaching for the color picker and pushing the sliders:

... What you do is sample your yellow more towards the green, okay. Make that your starting point. Now take your blue, lightly mix them. Lightly. And whatever color you get, pull it over here [in the Color Picker] and just go from left to right just pull it over [towards more saturation] okay and that becomes the color you want.

How is that natural color mixing?

So the problem is I'm mixing a yellow with a blue that's not very good for mixing greens, because my blue is way towards my reds.

No, that's not a problem to have a blue with some reds, it's called Ultramarine. And in real world, it mixes perfectly with yellow to give warm greens, as opposed to bronze.

But even when choosing more Cerulean (cooler) blue, the mixed "green" is too dirty and requires moving the Color Picker slider again towards the more saturated natural green.

Why do we have to move the sliders all the time like an abacus, when we have algorithms for that in 2024?

* Hansa yellow and Ultramarine blue using Mixer Brush gives dirty bronse or even dirty purple.

Even using RGB 16 or Lab 16 color profiles - same issue.

[Ann Turbovets]

Putting my voice in this thread. Please, whoever developer sees this, consider adding Mixbox! Make artists happy and fruitful. You were able to provide AI system - can implement this as well

[Trevor.Dennis]

Just to add that I love this grap[hic and what it tells us, and that I fully support Photoshop having a function to mix colours the same as they do in real life.

[bobzilla63]

Well, after seeing all the AI stuff Adobe is adding, and the Mixer Brush and brush engine in general hasn't been touched in many years, I think we can assume they have no plans of adding real pigment mixing. They just don;t seem interested in enhancing Photoshop's painting ability. Those who have painted in it for years are perhaps not interested and deal with workarounds, like just picking colors they want rather than mix them.

JUst my 2cents...

Bob

[D Fosse]

@Trevor.Dennis 

Actually that graphic isn't necessarily very realistic.

I have, as some of you may know, a five year art academy education in my history. It's a long time ago, but I do know pigments and how they behave.

You might get that bright green on the left from certain synthetic phtalocyanine blue pigments on the cyan-blue side - and a much purer lemon yellow. But most traditional blue pigments, like cobolt, ultramarine, cerulean and prussian blue, would give the muddy colors in the middle. That's realistic. Most real world pigment mixing (oil or acrylic) is pretty disapponting.