Spolvero: Trace Art Projector

Bring your own photo, lock it over a real surface, and trace it. Free — and the overlay never drifts.

Spolvero is a tracing app and drawing projector for artists and makers. It turns your phone into an art projector and a light box: put your reference photo over the live camera view — or under a sheet of paper on the screen — and transfer your drawing onto canvas, paper, wood, fabric or skin.

TWO WAYS TO TRACE

• Camera mode — see your surface through the camera with your photo overlaid in transparency. Rest the phone on a stand and draw on any opaque surface: canvas, sketchbook, wood, a wall.

• Lightbox mode — full-brightness screen with your image under the paper, like a classic light box for tracing. Touch-lock stops your pencil and palm from moving anything.

WHAT YOU NEED

Nothing else. Your phone, your photo, and the surface you want to draw on. A phone stand — or a glass, or a stack of books — helps in camera mode. Thin paper works best for lightbox drawing: tracing paper, vellum, layout paper. High-contrast photos give the cleanest lines. No projector, no printer, no transfer paper, no light table.

BUILT TO STAY PUT

• The overlay never drifts — your reference stays exactly where you placed it.

• LOCK protects your placement from accidental touches; unlocking is deliberate.

• Tap-to-focus with focus and exposure lock, camera zoom kept separate from image gestures, pause and torch.

• Hold-to-peek: press to hide the overlay and check your marks, release and it returns exactly where it was.

FREE, FOR REAL

• Import your own photos from gallery or camera — unlimited, never behind a paywall.

• One project saved at a time — importing a new photo replaces it. PRO keeps every project.

• Opacity, zoom, pan and rotate. Basic edge outline, processed on your device. Simple grid overlay (2×2, 3×3, 4×4).

• Works offline. No account, no sign-up. Nothing is recorded or uploaded.

SPOLVERO PRO — ONE-TIME PURCHASE, NO SUBSCRIPTION

• Unlimited saved projects, stored on your device

• Advanced edge styles — Sketch and Stencil — with fine threshold, thickness and invert control

• Custom grids: choose cells and colors, save and reuse them across projects

• No ads — removes the home banners and the end-of-session ad

The free version shows ads outside your tracing session. While you trace: never.

WHAT SPOLVERO DOES NOT DO

It does not generate art. There is no AI drawing for you, no filter that finishes the picture. You bring the photo, you place it, and you draw every line yourself. It does not ask for an account, an email or an internet connection.

WHO IT'S FOR

Painters tracing a reference onto canvas before the first layer. Muralists scaling a sketch up to a wall. Tattoo artists placing a tattoo stencil on skin by hand. Portrait artists who work with a portrait grid. Sign painters, letterers, pyrography artists. Sketchers who trace line drawings, and crafters transferring a pattern onto fabric, wood or leather. Art students copying a master drawing line by line. If you have ever used a camera lucida, a light box, tracing paper or a sketch projector, Spolvero does the same job — from your pocket.

Spolvero takes its name from the Renaissance pouncing technique masters used to transfer their drawings onto the wall.