Value Study 4+
Your artist's assistant
Diem Limited
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- Free
- Offers In-App Purchases
Screenshots
Description
In art, a value (or tone) is how light or dark a colour is. If you're learning to paint or draw, a good place to start is by doing value studies. These are small loose sketches in greyscale that show where shadows fall and highlights appear. These are particularly useful when the subject is more complicated, when it's hard to see through the colours to show the subtle shadows.
If you're learning to paint or draw, value studies are a sure-fire way to improve both your artwork and how you visualise references in your mind. People often use photo editors to convert a colour photo to black and white... this is helpful but this app goes further.
By using Value Study, you're able to flick between levels of detail. Maybe you want to start with just black and white to get a base down, then add in extra values one by one to build up your understanding of the reference you are studying.
You can even take it a step further and select all areas that have a matching tone. Click one of the values along the bottom in the greyscale palette to see all areas that match it in the image, so you can focus in on one value while painting it. For example in a portrait, this could mean seeing how different parts of the body have the same amount of shadow despite potentially looking wildly different when viewed in colour.
Value Study is a tool, not to replace your own value studies but to enhance them and especially to help beginner artists have some idea how where to start when looking at complicated reference imagery.
What’s New
Version 2.0.1
This has been a long time coming. Value Study version 2.0 is full of subtle improvements based on feedback (which I am very thankful for!) through reviews and emails.
It is also exciting for me to announce Value Study Pro. This is an affordable paid upgrade to Value Study. All existing features will always be free, but if you upgrade to Pro, you will have extra convenience features and the ability to customise further the value studies produced.
Let's start with what's in Value Study Pro:
Value outlines
- You can now easily switch between seeing the values filled in or outlined like a drawing.
- If you select a value and enable outlines simultaneously... you will see the selected value filled in with all others outlined. This feature has been the most highly requested, so I'm excited for you all to try it out!
Customisable image stabilisation
- Everyone can turn image stabilisation on/off in settings. With Pro you can take it a step further and use a slider to tweak it further... this is particularly effective when the value outlines are enabled.
Portrait mode
- Remove the background from portraits so you can focus on the people in your image without the background affecting the values shown.
Gallery
- The new gallery tab lets you open multiple images at once. You can switch between them easily by swiping on the image (while zoomed out) too!
- This becomes incredibly useful when used for a series of images taken from different angles, such as a person turning around
Version 2.0 updates (all included in the free tier):
- Dark mode!
- A massive under-the-hood rework, enabling new features to be added.
- Show the value number under each value swatch (this can be toggled in the settings)
- Improved support for file formats: RAW, HEIC, WebP
- Ability to flip the image horizontally
- Doubled the maximum number of values
Version 2.0.1 brings a tiny improvement to prevent the purchase and restore buttons being accidentally clicked multiple times.
Ratings and Reviews
Wonderful app and major improvements!!!
I wrote a review last year but I wanted to write another quick one. Once again I’ve used this app for art projects and it has saved my life. Completely!! I don’t have to go through in PS and manually add in the pixelations. Also thank you for confusing to improve every month! Thank you as well for updating the pixelation feature! This will further help a lot for me in my art journey and especially value studying, defining value edges is still very difficult.
Abt the app: Sometimes when I would go in to edit some of my high detailed images it would definitely work, but it wouldn’t be as crisp when the separation was added as I imagined it might be. So want I to thank you for improving that! Once again love this app and I’ll continue to be using it!!! ❤️😉
Developer Response ,
Thank you so much! This is the first review and I’m so grateful that you liked it enough to write it. I was in the same position as you, finding techniques useful but a hassle... I’m really glad the app worked in a way that helped you.
I think you’re right that it would be really useful on iPad as it could work well alongside the drawing apps that people already use. So thanks for the request, will definitely look into it for a future update.
Update: Value Study is now supported on iPad 😀
Update 5th Feb 2022: Thank you so much for your updated review… it means the world to me that you’re still using it and appreciating the updates I’ve made!
In the new settings menu there is a link to send an email, free feel to email with any problems or improvement ideas you have 🙂
Fantastic!! Perfect!!
I’m taking an art class and we have to turn in a NOTAN. Quick explanation, a NOTAN is a value study. It would be what you’d see if you squinted and could only see in black and white. Sometimes they are just black and white, sometimes 3-5 values. This app makes this so EASY because you can select any of those shades of grey and tap that value, that value only then turns green on your photo. Once you can see/draw that you can make another value green. In no time a person who doesn’t see values (like me!) can learn to see the difference. My art homework just became possible! Thanks, from someone just starting out in art!!!
Developer Response ,
I’m so glad you found it useful!
Very cool
I really like this as it is. I am making one improvement suggestion that would be of great help to artist. If we could select more than one value at a time in the highlight feature that would be awesome. It would be so helpful to be able to highlight several value areas at once so as to see them in groups and understand how to treat them in a drawing or painting.
App Privacy
The developer, Diem Limited, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Diem Limited
- Size
- 4.3 MB
- Category
- Graphics & Design
- Compatibility
-
- iPhone
- Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
- iPad
- Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
- Languages
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English
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2020 Diem Ltd
- Price
- Free
- In-App Purchases
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- Value Study Pro $1.99
Supports
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Family Sharing
Some in‑app purchases, including subscriptions, may be shareable with your family group when Family Sharing is enabled.