Shape Simplifier

What does simplifying a reference do?

Most reference photos carry far more detail than you need to start a painting. Simplifying reduces that detail down to a handful of clear colour and value masses: the big honest shapes a piece is actually built from, before any of the fiddly bits get added on top.

Why artists simplify references

• Blocking in with confidence instead of getting lost chasing detail too early
• Seeing the large shapes a subject is actually made of
• Deciding what to leave out, which matters as much as what to include
• Working from a photograph without being enslaved to it (the reference is just that, a reference)

How this tool works

Upload a reference and the image is broken into a few thousand small paint strokes that follow the edges of its forms, each keeping its own average colour. Because the strokes are local, nothing is shared between distant parts of the picture, so the full colour range survives even though the image simplifies dramatically. That is what stops it looking like a flat poster.

The controls run top to bottom in the order you'll usually reach for them. Style is fixed on Clusters for now (the stroke-based approach described above). A Posterize style, which would snap those stroke colours to a set number of flat steps for a harder, more graphic block-in, is built but parked until it behaves; the button is there, disabled, so you know it's coming. Smoothing sets how softly one stroke blends into its neighbours: None keeps edges crisp, which reads most like paint laid in flat; Subtle and Strong blend progressively.

Then the four sliders. Detail sets how many strokes there are, in effect how big the marks are, from a couple of hundred broad slabs to several thousand small ones. It does not change how many colours exist. Stroke shape decides whether strokes stretch and wrap tightly around edges (looser, more painterly) or stay compact and evenly sized (more rigid, tile-like). Stroke tails drags a frayed tail off each stroke along the direction of the form, so fur runs with the fur and drapery with the fold; it only acts where the image genuinely has a direction, leaving flat areas like open sky with clean edges. Pre-blur settles noisy photos before any of this happens, so speckle and texture don't pull strokes of their own.

If you're holding a notan from the Notan Generator, an extra option appears above the controls: keep every stroke inside the shapes you drew. No stroke spans both sides of the notan, and tails stop rather than dragging light into shadow, so the boundary stays exactly where you put it. Your value design, rather than the photograph's own colour, decides where one mass ends and the next begins.

To compare against the photo at any point, press and hold on the image, or use the Show original button beneath it to pin the original while you adjust.

Combine with other tools

• Run Value Study or Notan Generator first to settle the light pattern before simplifying colour
• Hold a notan from Notan Generator to drive the dark/light region split here
• Use Palette Extractor on the same reference to pull the actual colours out of those simplified masses