Prediction Model for Semitransparent Watercolor Pigment Mixtures Using Deep Learning with a Dataset of Transmittance and Reflectance

Mei-Yun Chen, Ya-Bo Huang, Sheng-Ping Chang, Ming Ouhyoung

Published 2019-03-30Version 1

Learning color mixing is difficult for novice painters. In order to support novice painters in learning color mixing, we propose a prediction model for semitransparent pigment mixtures and use its prediction results to create a Smart Palette system. Such a system is constructed by first building a watercolor dataset with two types of color mixing data, indicated by transmittance and reflectance: incrementation of the same primary pigment and a mixture of two different pigments. Next, we apply the collected data to a deep neural network to train a model for predicting the results of semitransparent pigment mixtures. Finally, we constructed a Smart Palette that provides easily-followable instructions on mixing a target color with two primary pigments in real life: when users pick a pixel, an RGB color, from an image, the system returns its mixing recipe which indicates the two primary pigments being used and their quantities.