Photo Palette Extractor
Turn any photo into a color palette — upload an image and get its dominant colors instantly. Everything runs in your browser; your photos never leave your device.
Drop an image here
or click to browse · paste from clipboard (Ctrl+V)
Click any color to copy its code.
Palette Library
Saved in this browser only — nothing is uploaded to a server.
No saved palettes yet. Extract a palette and hit “Save to Library”.
Drop a photo in, get this out
This red-neon night shot went straight into the extractor above — no editing, no settings. The 8 colors on the right are the real result.
Extracted palette · 8 colors
#090203
#500FED
#FC0100
#B005E9
#F701AF
#0B4CEE
#C2AC7B
#F5F3E7
8 dominant colors · red, magenta & blue neons all captured · every hex copyable
What is a photo color palette extractor?
A color palette extractor analyzes the pixels of an image and returns its most representative colors as reusable color codes. Designers use it to pull brand colors from photography, developers grab HEX values for CSS, and artists study how real-world scenes balance tones. This extractor runs a two-stage algorithm that keeps small but important accent colors — the red door in a gray street photo — instead of returning five shades of the same surface.
Balanced extraction
Median-cut clustering plus a distinctness pass, so dominant colors and small vivid accents both make the palette.
Eyedropper precision
Click any pixel of the photo to add exactly that color — sampled at the original resolution, not the on-screen size.
Flexible output
Five palette themes, four layout positions, HEX / RGB / HSL codes, PNG export, and a local palette library.
100% private
Extraction happens in your browser with the Canvas API. Your photo is never uploaded to any server.
Extract a palette in three steps
-
Upload a photo
Drop an image, click to browse, or paste from your clipboard. JPG, PNG, WebP — anything your browser can display.
-
Tune the palette
Choose 3–8 colors, switch themes (Default, Dominant, Light, Dark, Vivid), sort them, or eyedrop extra colors.
-
Copy or export
Click a swatch to copy its code, copy all colors at once, export a PNG with the photo, or save it to your library.
Getting a palette you'll actually use
Extraction is automatic; judgment isn't. Three habits separate a usable palette from a pretty screenshot:
- Feed it opinionated photos. Images with strong lighting and a few dominant subjects produce palettes with a point of view. Busy photos — crowds, cluttered rooms — average out into eight shades of gray-brown, because that's honestly what they contain.
- Trim eight down to three-to-five. Eight colors is a reading of the photo, not a design system. Pick one dominant, one or two supports, one accent — then give each a full light-to-dark range in the Shades generator.
- Steal the mood, not the exact hex. A film-still palette tells you the relationship (warm dark + cold accent, say). It's usually better to keep that relationship and nudge the exact values toward your brand than to copy the codes verbatim.
Related tools & guides
- Image Color Picker — Need one exact pixel instead of a whole palette? Pick it with the zoom loupe.
- Color Harmony Generator — Turn any extracted color into a complementary, triadic, or analogous scheme.
- How to choose a color palette from a photo — A short guide to picking the right base photo and trimming the result to 3–5 usable colors.
Frequently asked questions
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. The image is read and analyzed entirely inside your browser using the Canvas API. You can load this page, disconnect from the internet, and the extractor still works. Nothing is stored except palettes you explicitly save — and those live only in your own browser.
How many colors can I extract?
The slider covers 3 to 10 automatically extracted colors, and you can add more with the eyedropper up to a total of 12. Five is the sweet spot for most design work — see our palette guide for how to assign roles to each color.
Which color code formats are supported?
HEX (like #5B5BD6), RGB, and HSL. The format switch changes both the labels on the swatches and what gets copied to your clipboard.
Why doesn't the palette show a small color I care about?
The Default theme is tuned to catch small salient colors, but if a tiny detail still gets averaged away, you have two tools: switch to the Vivid theme (most saturated colors first), or use Pick Color and click the exact pixel you want.
Can I use the extracted colors commercially?
Colors themselves are not copyrightable — a HEX value is just a number. Use extracted palettes freely in any personal or commercial project. The photo itself, of course, keeps whatever license it had.