Color Palette Extractor
Drop a photo below to pull its dominant colors into a ready-to-use palette. Everything runs on your device — the image is never uploaded.
Drag and drop an image here, or
Getting a clean palette
Photos with a clear, limited color story (a sunset, a product shot against a plain backdrop, a piece of branding) tend to produce the cleanest palettes. Very busy or low-contrast photos can produce muddier averaged colors — try lowering the color count if that happens, since fewer, broader groups tend to average out noise better.
Frequently asked questions
How does this extract colors from an image?
It uses a technique called median-cut color quantization: every pixel in the image is grouped with visually similar pixels, those groups are split repeatedly until there are as many groups as the color count you asked for, and each group's average color becomes one palette swatch. It's the same general approach professional color-picker and design tools use.
Is this the same as an eyedropper tool that picks one pixel's color?
No — an eyedropper samples one exact pixel, which can land on noise, a highlight, or a shadow rather than the color you actually perceive as dominant. This tool averages across the whole image to surface the colors that best represent it overall, which is usually more useful for building a palette.
How many colors should I extract?
5-6 colors is a good default for a UI or brand palette. Use fewer (3-4) if you want just the core dominant colors, or more (up to 8) if you want finer-grained detail, like separate shades within the same color family.
Can I use the extracted colors directly for text on a background?
Check contrast before you do — this tool extracts colors based on visual dominance in the photo, not accessibility. Two extracted colors that look great together in a photo can still fail WCAG contrast requirements as text-on-background. Run any pairing you plan to use for text through a dedicated contrast checker first.
Does my image get uploaded anywhere?
No — the image is decoded and analyzed entirely in your browser using the Canvas API. Nothing is ever sent to a server, so there's no upload step and no size limit beyond what your device can handle.
What image formats can I upload?
Anything your browser can decode as an image — JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, and most others. If your browser can display it in an <img> tag, this tool can extract colors from it.