Tattoo Ink Mixing Calculator
Pick a target color and get the mixing recipe — how many parts of which base inks (white, black, red, yellow, blue…) with a live color preview.
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Select at least two base inks
How Ink Mixing Is Calculated
Inks mix like pigments, not light: yellow + blue makes green, and adding everything drifts toward mud — so simple RGB averaging gives wrong recipes. This tool simulates subtractive pigment mixing and then searches thousands of part-combinations of your selected base inks, scoring each candidate in the perceptual Lab color space to find the closest match. You get a recipe like "3 parts yellow + 1 part red + 1 part white", a side-by-side swatch of target vs. mix, and a match percentage.
Honest limits: real pigments vary by brand and batch, dispersions differ in strength, and healed color in skin reads darker and cooler than in the cap. Treat the recipe as a starting point — mix a small test amount first, and remember a drop of black goes much further than a drop of white.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the recipe use so little black?
Black pigment is far stronger than the others — in real mixing one drop of black shifts a cap dramatically. The simulator reflects that: dark targets need only a small black share, and you should still add it drop by drop.
The match percentage is 90% — is that good?
Yes. Above ~90% the difference is barely noticeable in a cap, and skin undertone will affect the healed result more than that remaining gap. Below ~80%, enable more base inks (e.g. green or magenta) for a closer mix.
Will the healed tattoo look like the preview?
No screen can promise that — healed ink sits under skin, which shifts colors darker, softer and cooler, and varies with skin tone. The preview matches the wet mix; experienced artists compensate by mixing slightly brighter.
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Tattoo Ink Mixing Calculator