Palette - Everything behind the art, in one place.
an art collection management platform that helps professional artists organize their inventory, track sales and consignments, manage dealer relationships, and understand their business through beautifully designed analytics.
Palette is a full-stack web platform built for working artists who want clarity and control over their art business. Developed with React/TypeScript and Node.js, it provides a complete toolkit for cataloging artwork with rich metadata and multi-image galleries, tracking sales, commissions, exhibitions, and expenses, and managing relationships with dealers and collectors. The platform includes powerful analytics dashboards, AI-powered creative inspiration tools, subscription-based access control, and a fully responsive design—bringing together organization, insight, and creativity in one seamless system.
Palette: Features and Technical Overview
Palette is a comprehensive art collection management platform designed to help professional artists organize and grow their creative business. The application offers a robust suite of features including detailed artwork cataloging with multi-image galleries and automatic thumbnail generation, comprehensive sales and pricing tracking, consignment management, and dealer relationship tools. Artists can manage exhibitions and art shows, track commission work from inquiry to delivery, monitor business expenses and material costs, and maintain detailed client records. The platform includes an AI-powered inspiration gallery using OpenAI's DALL-E API to generate reference images and style libraries, advanced analytics dashboards with visual insights into collection performance and sales trends, and a subscription-based access system with tiered feature restrictions. Additional capabilities include inventory movement tracking, limited edition print management, secure document storage for certificates and provenance records, and comprehensive search and filtering across all collection data.
Palette was built as a modern full-stack web application using React 18 with TypeScript for the frontend, powered by Vite for lightning-fast development and optimized production builds, and styled with Tailwind CSS for a responsive, mobile-first design. The backend runs on Node.js with Express, utilizing SQLite3 for data persistence, JWT-based authentication for secure user sessions, and bcrypt for password hashing. Image processing is handled by Sharp for thumbnail generation and optimization, while Multer manages secure file uploads. The application integrates with Stripe for subscription payment processing and OpenAI for creative AI features. Deployment was executed on AWS Lightsail using a Ubuntu 22.04 LTS instance, with Nginx configured as a reverse proxy providing gzip compression and aggressive static file caching. The production environment is managed by PM2 for process monitoring and automatic restarts, secured with Let's Encrypt SSL certificates providing HTTPS encryption, and includes comprehensive security headers, rate limiting on API endpoints, and firewall protection. The entire deployment pipeline includes automated build processes, database migrations, and log management with rotation, ensuring a reliable and scalable production environment accessible at https://thepalette.art.