How Tintstack turns a photo into a color 3D print

Tintstack is a free web app for “filament painting”: a flat relief, about 1–2.5 mm thick, printed in a few filaments one after another. Thin layers of plastic are translucent, so a little white over black looks grey and a little yellow over red looks orange. By choosing how many layers of which filament lie on each spot, a handful of spools gives a whole picture.

What you need

• An ordinary FDM 3D printer – no multi-color unit is required. With a single extruder the printer pauses and you swap the spool by hand, usually two to four times per picture. With a Prusa MMU3, a Prusa XL, a Bambu Lab AMS or another multi-material system the swaps are automatic.
• Two to five filaments – black and white plus one or two colors already go a long way. PLA is the usual choice; do not mix materials (PLA with PETG does not hold together).
• A photo. Portraits, pets, landscapes and paintings work well; the app can crop it, adjust it and remove the background.

The steps

1. Drop a photo into the app (or try one of the samples). It stays in your browser – nothing is uploaded.
2. Tick the filaments you own. Tintstack works out which of them to use, in what order and on which layers to swap them. It can also suggest the best combination for the photo.
3. Set the width of the print. Layer height (0.08 mm by default), the first layer and the other details are under “Advanced”.
4. Choose your printer. You get a ready-made project for PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer with the layers, 100% infill and filament swaps already set – or a plain STL with written instructions for any other slicer.
5. Slice and print. Before every swap the printer stops by itself and asks for the next filament; the app lists what to load and when.

Transmission distance (TD)

• How see-through a filament is decides the colors. It is described by one number, the transmission distance (TD) in millimeters: a filament with TD 1.6 hides what is under it at 0.16 mm. Typical values are fine for a first print. For prints that matter, Tintstack offers a 15-minute test tile printed with the same filaments – photograph it and the app works out the real values of all of them at once – and a test strip for a single filament.
• The catalog holds published values from Prusament, Polymaker and 3D-Fuel and the colors of more than forty other brands, and it finds a filament by name, product number, barcode or a photo of the spool.

Printers and slicers

Ready-made projects are available for PrusaSlicer (over 180 printers, including the Prusa CORE One, MK4S, MINI and XL, with MMU3 or INDX where available), Bambu Studio (A1, P1, P2 and X1 series and the H2S, with or without AMS) and OrcaSlicer (many brands). Nozzles from 0.25 to 0.8 mm are supported where the slicer has profiles for them. Any other slicer can use the STL together with the swap instructions.

Questions and answers

Is Tintstack free?

Yes. It is free to use, without an account. It runs entirely in your browser.

Are my photos uploaded anywhere?

No. The photo, the settings and the result stay in your browser; all the computing, including background removal and reading spool labels, happens on your device.

Do I need a multi-color printer?

No. A single-extruder printer is enough: the print pauses at the swap layers and you change the filament by hand. Multi-material systems such as the Prusa MMU3, Prusa INDX, Prusa XL or Bambu Lab AMS do the swaps by themselves.

How many filaments do I need?

Two are enough for a black-and-white picture; three to five give color. By default Tintstack plans at most three swaps per print.

How long does a print take and how much filament does it use?

A 120 mm wide picture typically takes one to three hours and 10–30 g of filament. The app shows the estimate for your printer before you download anything.

Will the print look like the preview?

The preview is computed from the transmission distance of each filament, so it is as good as those numbers. The “Realistic” view adds what a real print does to the picture, and the test tile lets you check the colors in a quarter of an hour.

Which file do I get?

A 3MF project for your slicer with everything set, or an STL with a text file that lists the layer height, infill and the layers at which to change filament.

Can I use it on a phone?

Yes, the app works on phones and tablets; the downloaded project is then opened in the slicer on a computer.

Open Tintstack

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