How Chromilla mixes paint

Real paint mixing is subtractive, not additive. When you blend two tubes on a palette, each pigment absorbs part of the light and what's left over is the colour you see. That's why mixing yellow and blue on canvas gives green, but the same operation on a screen (which is additive) gives grey. Chromilla models the subtractive behaviour using Kubelka-Munk style coefficients per pigment, so the recipe matches what your brush actually does.

Ratios matter more than most artists realise. A drop too much Phthalo Blue can swing a sky from dawn to midnight, because tinting strength varies wildly between pigments - Quinacridone Magenta and Titanium White can be 20× stronger per gram than the earth pigments next to them in the box. Chromilla normalises for tinting strength so the parts you see are the parts you actually squeeze, not a misleading 50/50 that lands nowhere near the target.

Brand calibration is where most generic mixing tools fall down. Daniel Smith Phthalo Blue is not the same as Winsor & Newton Phthalo Blue - same pigment index (PB15), different binder, pigment load, and tinting strength. Chromilla applies a per-tube modifier for each major brand, so the percentages shift when you change brand. Pick the tubes you actually own and the recipe is tuned to your palette, not a textbook average.

Medium matters too. Watercolour dries lighter as the binder lifts away from the pigment. Oil holds its colour but takes hours to level. Acrylic shifts darker as the milky binder turns clear. Chromilla applies a drying-shift correction per medium so the wet mix on your palette matches the dry colour on your canvas, not just the colour you see while the paint is still glossy.