[mrmotocross]

Hi
I am new here , and as a home project I was wanting to separate the tint ( which is what make the colour in paint ) from house paint , low sheen wall paint , wall paint is a water based paint . I noticed when you leave a paint can sit for 2 months , the tint falls to the bottom of the tine and needs to be shaken before use.
so what if I could let a can site there for 3 -4 months and collect the paint out and leave the tint behind . but don't want to wait 4 months . what would be another way of doing this ?

here is some info on how its made :
http://www.resene.com.au/whatispaint.htm

[Corribus]

Not knowing a whole lot about paint formulations, I offer the following: paint is a suspension, not a simple solution. Typically it is a suspension of various inorganic colorants in either an organic or aqueous-based binding matrix (a binder dissolved in a solvent that evaporates after you slather it onto a wall or canvas). It also includes a whole bunch of other substances, like stabilizers, UV protectants, biocidal agents, and etc. The pigments themselves are typically granular solids that are insoluble in the host solvent. As such, they do settle to the bottom of the paint can over time. However this doesn't necessarily mean that you can easily decant the rest of the paint components off of the solid pigments, because other chemicals in the paint may also co-settle or otherwise be irreversibly bound to the inorganic colorants that settle off. Also, white is also an inorganic pigment, so you couldn't remake "white paint" by this procedure anyway. You'd be left with some kind of semi-transparent goop that probably wouldn't function well as a paint even if you added new pigments to them.

You haven't specified WHY you want to do this, but speculating that you maybe intend to recolor your paint, it's probably far easier and less expensive just to buy new paint.

[Darryl1]

You could try to centrifuge the paint.  You would probably have to build something that could handle a can of paint, or just do small batches.
I recommend against holding the can and swinging it around really really fast.  You'll probably break something - either the can, your arm, your back, or the fluorescent bulbs in your garage.

If you want the white pigment portion you could just buy some titanium dioxide because that's probably the majority of the pigment.

-d