Adding a colorant: color picker, color family, and custom mixes

Colorants are the heart of your pantry. Adding one tells Ellie its color and how much you have, so she can reach for it in recipes.

Start with a known brand (catalog match)

If you're adding a colorant from a brand Ellie knows, start by typing its name. As you type a brand and product, Ellie checks her catalog for a match — and when she finds one, a "we found this in our catalog" card appears. Accept it and she fills in the details for you: the type, the color family, a description, and a supplier link, plus — new — the product photo, dropped in instantly so you don't wait on a background search.

So you're confirming what Ellie found rather than typing everything from scratch. Her catalogs cover brands like Eye Candy, Just Resin, Rolio, and more — and they keep growing.

If your colorant isn't in the catalog (a custom mix, or a brand Ellie doesn't know yet), no problem — just fill in the fields below by hand.

Pick a type and color family

Start by choosing the colorant type and its color family. The family sets the neighborhood of color you're working in.

Fine-tuning the shade

From there, dial in the exact shade with the HSL sliders or by entering a hex value.

Heads up: The sliders stay within the color family you picked — to reach a hue in a different family, switch the family first. And until you set a precise shade, the card's swatch may show a generated family color as a stand-in.

Stock, cost, and supplier

Set the on-hand amount, unit, and status, and optionally add a cost and a supplier URL so cost estimates and reordering work later. Ellie also looks for a product image in the background.

Custom-mix colorants

If you blend your own colors, you can build a custom-mix colorant from other colorants in your pantry. Ellie tracks it as its own item, with its cost inherited from the parts that go into it.