Image Color Palette Extractor

What is it?

An image color palette extractor analyzes the pixels of a photo or graphic and identifies the most representative colors — giving you a curated set of swatches that capture the visual essence of the image. This is one of the most widely used techniques in graphic design, branding, UI design, and web development. When you upload an image, this tool samples its pixels using the HTML5 Canvas API and runs a color quantization algorithm to cluster similar colors together. The result is a palette of dominant colors — typically between 4 and 12 swatches, depending on how many you request. Each color is shown as a visual swatch alongside its HEX code, RGB values, and HSL representation. With a single click you can copy any individual color code. The palette can be exported in multiple formats for direct use in your workflow: as CSS custom properties (variables) for pasting into a stylesheet, as a JSON object for use in JavaScript or design tokens, as a plain text list of HEX codes, or as a PNG swatch image you can save and reference in design tools like Figma, Sketch, or Photoshop. No image data is ever sent to a server — all pixel analysis runs locally in your browser.

How to use it

1. Click "Upload image" or drag and drop a photo, illustration or screenshot onto the upload area.
2. Use the slider to choose how many colors to extract — from 4 (minimal palette) to 12 (rich palette).
3. The dominant colors are extracted and displayed as swatches with HEX, RGB and HSL values.
4. Click any swatch to copy its HEX code to your clipboard.
5. Choose your export format: CSS variables, JSON, HEX list or PNG swatch image.
6. Click the export button to copy the data or download the swatch PNG.

Why use this tool

Extracting colors from images is a fundamental task in design and branding work. When building a website around a product photo, creating a presentation that matches a brand photograph, or finding color inspiration from a landscape or artwork, you need accurate, usable color codes — not rough guesses. Manually picking colors from an image in Photoshop requires launching a heavy application just for this single task. Online tools often require you to create an account, limit how many images you can process, or add watermarks to exported palettes. This tool does none of those things — it runs entirely in your browser, processes as many images as you like, and gives you the full palette in a developer-ready format. The CSS variables export is particularly useful for frontend developers: paste it directly into your ":root {}" block and reference the colors throughout your stylesheet. The JSON export works perfectly for design token systems, Tailwind CSS config files, or any JavaScript framework that uses theme tokens.

Frequently asked questions