🎞️ Value Thumbnail

$ man value-thumbnail

Squint at the scene, then rebuild its value pattern. The grid starts all mid — pick a brush swatch and drag to paint cells, or tap a single cell to cycle it light → mid → dark. Picking a value is the swatches' job, so a tap never changes what your brush is loaded with, and lifting mid-drag to re-place your hand (which a trackpad has to do) carries on the same stroke instead of flipping a cell. “brush mode” swaps the grid for a freehand canvas: paint the masses in strokes and “done” downsamples them onto the same 12×8 grid for scoring. The two are the same answer seen two ways, so switching between them carries your work across.

“done” checks every cell against the scene’s own three-value map — its natural light, mid and dark groups (relative to this scene, not fixed cutoffs). Full credit exact, a sliver for one step off, nothing for flipped; borderline cells sitting right on a cut count either neighbouring value (dotted marks). A flat one-value grid scores 30 — the meter starts where observation begins.

After scoring, tap the scene or the grid to flip between your read and the true pattern.

Studio tip: paint the pattern, not the objects — three values is a composition tool, not a colouring book.