Palette Keeper

I have had my paid version of this app for several months. I wrote to the developers in May of 2024 asking how often they updated their color swatches. No answer and no updates…

I’ve love this app! It is so handy to have. I have created several palettes and educated myself just through this app. There are just a few things to work through so that it why it is 4 stars. I do realize this is a fairly new app and hopefully improvements will come. For me it was worth the purchase!

I bought the palette because the free one does not really do a whole lot. For the price, the app should come with instructions and should be able to sync with my other devices instead of paying again. The search is not extensive which does not include my kuretake colors. I’ll keep it anyway since I’ve already paid. It’s overpriced for limited functionality.

This will maybe someday be a great app, maybe, but for now it has some serious limitations. Here are the 3 I've discovered so far. You can't sync data between devices (I confirmed this w customer support who is basically the app developer herself?) This means that any palette you create on your phone, will not appear on your iPad. It also doesn't seem to recognize on my other device that I bought the "pro" version. Using this on my iPhone means the color swatches are teeny tiny. To drag and move a square around a palette, you'd have to tap an even tinier little "=" icon at the top of each square. If you don't hit the icon JUST right, you can't drag that swatch. If could go the moving around on my iPad, life would be less frustrating. To do so now means recreating all my palettes AGAIN, and paying for the the pro version AGAIN. No, thanks. My favorite palette is 9 columns across and 4 rows down. The app only allows max of 8 columns across, so I had to build it sideways, if that makes sense. Not ideal. My workspace is such that pivoting my palette 90 degrees is not an option. The watercolor enthusiast world is HUGE! I belong to many Facebook groups, one of which has over 44,000 members. The market for a GOOD palette database is enormous. And we share our great finds. I can't say this is one of them yet.

I just learned about this app! Nearly immediately it provided me more efficiency when choosing a color, prepping for a workshop, and ordering more tube stock. The ability to create a palette for any groups of paints is lifesaving. I made a palette for my paints by manufacturer. The sorting options within a palette are great; transparent, pigment, reds, etc. While reviewing a workshops supply list I encountered colors unknown to me. So on the app I looked up the formula, searched for similar formulas that I own (via the manufacturer palettes I created) and found that mixing two of my owned paints kept me from needing to buy any paint for the workshop!

I've been looking for something like this for years. Finally something I can really use to track the pigments I use for each painting. I love it! The link to Amazon for buying each color is brilliant, too!