Courageous Octopus’s Website
Today we are reviewing a product for Historical Miniature Wargamers that, if you have an iPhone or Android compatible product, and you’re not using this, you should. I have been using paintRack for about two years now, and I must say, it’s only gotten better with the development that Courageous Octopus has put into the product.
My experiences with the Android version of the product have been nothing but seamless. paintRack is an app that can track your paint collection, allow you to add new paints seamlessly using nothing more than scanning them by their barcode, and match colors you don’t have with colors you do have. It also allows you to create “sets” that supplement a painting diary with specific colors, any notes you might want to keep. It also has a very handy dandy wish list that helps you find and track the paint you need. It’s made shopping for paint online or at the hobby store an easy thing.
A view of the expansive library paintRack offers to track your paint collection | Courageous Octopus
The paint library is expansive and detailed, and the program covers such lines as:
- AK interactive
- AMMO
- Abteilung 502
- Aero Color
- Alclad II
- Apple Barrel
- Army Painter
- Battlefront
- CVLTCRAFT
- Citadel (Classic, and newer lines)
- Coat D’ Arms
- Createx
- Delta Ceramcoat
- FREAKflex
- FW Inks
- FolkArt
- Gaia Color
- Garage Kits.US
- Green Stuff World
- Hataka
- Humbrol
- Instar
- Italeri
- Jo Sonja’s
- Kimera Kolors
- Lifecolor
- Liquitex
- Minitaire
- Mr. Hobby
- Mr. Paint
- Reaper
- Revell
- Scale75
- Secret Weapon
- Stynylrez
- Tamiya
- Testors
- Turbodork
- Vallejo
- Warcolors
- Wargames Foundry
What I like the most about this program is the library. You can view your collection by an extensive master list organized by color or broken down into smaller lists by the manufacturer. The search tool is powerful, and I’ve searched by manufacturer numbers, names, and in one case, SKU and always found what I was looking for. This feature alone makes the program more than worth it, but the other added features make this program a winner. Also, seeing how many you have of a paint is possible as well. Click on a color, and you’ll be taken to the “Paint Details” screen. You’ll get all the details of a given color, what line it’s in, the manufacturer, what kind of container it’s in, and in the middle, a number saying how many bottles of that color you have. It’s very useful.
View of the Paint Details Screen | Courageous Octopus
The GUI is exceptionally clean and well laid out, and the learning curve is shallow. The biggest thing any user will have to pick up is how the color matching algorithm works. Basically, when you match a color, you get this helpful screen that gives you five options for a match per line. What you don’t see here are the values displayed by each of the matches. The lower the number, the better the match. An even better feature, it tells you what matches you have and which ones you don’t. If you don’t have the color? It’s a simple thing to select it, then press on the star icon in the upper right and add it to your wish list.
A view of the Color Tools screen | Courageous Octopus
The paint sets themselves are equally simple in their interface, and I’ve used them to break down paint tutorials and the like so to have them in one place and not potentially mess up a book or other reference. The interface is clean, simple and allows you to type in notes and other instructions to guide your painting sessions. It’s another feature I use often.
View of the Sets Screen | Jason Weiser
This is also a feature I use quite often as many tutorials are often written in favor of one paint or another, and I admit I am a bit eclectic in my paint buying. I have at least one paint bottle from a dozen of the manufacturers listed here, and with more manufacturers being added by Courageous Octopus, I’ll be using this app to keep me organized and knowing what I need and when I need it for some time to come.
Adding new paints to your collection is also a snap with the “Rapid Add” feature. If the paint has a barcode? Then you’re good to go. Scan it, add it, and voila, in the library it goes.
View of the Rapid Scan Screen | Courageous Octopus
The program can also do an online backup of all your paint information to the cloud, ready to download it to a new phone or device as needed. Another useful feature in a plethora of useful features this app provides.
My only complaint is one that you cannot ding the program for. It doesn’t cover every paint line out there, nor can it. I mean, Howard Hues, Ral Partha, and some other lesser lines aren’t covered by this app, but the folks at Courageous Octopus are really responsive to suggestions and comments about which paint lines should be added to the program. I know they added three I requested (to be fair, I probably wasn’t the only one asking).
The other wrinkle is like most apps, you must pay to unlock all the features (namely the Wish List, Rapid Scan, and Color Tools features), but it’s a one-time charge of $4.00 or a bottle of Vallejo. I think it’s well worth the price, and I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth.
I would more than recommend this app to all miniature gamers out there. It’s a fine piece of software that I’ve used for several years and have turned several of my gaming buddies onto it. They all swear by it, and to me, it’s one of the best wargaming-related apps for smart devices to have come out in a long time. For me, this was five out of five stars here.
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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)