Colour Variations
Turn one design into a proofing sheet: tonal grades, hue rotations, duotones, and limited-ink separations. Every tile reports how far it moved from the original and how much ink it needs, so the sheet is something you can actually decide from.
What this does, and what it will not do
Every variation here is a measured colour transform: lightness and chroma moves in LAB, hue rotations that skip neutrals, luminance mapped onto a two-ink ramp, or a k-means separation down to a fixed number of colours. All of it is reversible arithmetic, which is why each tile can report its own ΔE against the original.
It does not redraw anything. It will not restyle a photograph into an illustration, change a typeface, add or remove elements, or invent detail that is not already in the file. Those need a generative model, and this tool deliberately does not pretend otherwise — earlier versions of this page implied more than the code was doing.
The limited-ink mode is the one worth spending time in if you print. Screen printing and vinyl are priced per colour, so seeing the same design at three, four and five inks side by side, with the coverage of each colour listed, is usually more useful than any filter.
Questions
Is my design uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is decoded in the page and every transform runs on your own device.
What does ΔE mean on each tile?
The mean colour difference between that variation and the original, measured in LAB. Roughly, under 2 is hard to see, 2 to 10 is a clear but related shift, and above 10 reads as a different colourway.
Why does the ink count matter?
Screen printing needs a separate screen per colour and vinyl needs a separate cut and weed, so each additional colour adds real cost. The limited-ink mode shows what the design looks like at each count and how much of the artwork each colour covers.
Are downloads full resolution?
Yes. The grid renders small previews for speed, but the download button re-applies the same transform to the original pixels at full size.
Why is near-white left alone by default?
On most transfers the white is the garment or the paper, not ink. Tinting it produces a proof that cannot be reproduced, so the default is to leave it clean. Turn the option off if you are printing on a coloured stock.