Image color extractor analyzes an uploaded photo and pulls out its 6 most visually prominent colors, generating a palette with HEX, RGB, HSL, and PANTONE codes. It also exports the image and palette together as a single PNG for design presentations or social sharing. All processing happens in the browser — nothing is sent to a server.
How colors are selected and ordered
The tool uses the ColorThief algorithm, which groups pixels by visual similarity (color clustering) rather than counting raw pixel frequency. This means a small but visually dominant accent color will be extracted even if it covers only a fraction of the image. The resulting 6 colors are then sorted by hue, so the palette displays as a smooth gradient rather than a random assortment.
Standard mode vs. PANTONE mode
In standard mode, each color swatch shows the actual extracted value — the exact HEX, RGB, and HSL numbers from the image. In PANTONE mode, each swatch shifts to the closest PANTONE TCX match. The displayed numbers change to the official PANTONE standard values, not the original extracted color.
PANTONE TCX (Textile Color eXtended) is the textile industry's extended color standard with 2,000+ colors. It's widely used to communicate color specs between designers, dye houses, and manufacturers across different media.
Exporting the palette image
Clicking "Export Image" renders the original photo alongside the 6-color swatches at 2× resolution and saves it as color-palette-{timestamp}.png. Each swatch includes its color code values. The layout adapts automatically: portrait images get a horizontal palette strip below; landscape images get the palette on the right.
Getting accurate extractions from problem images
- Heavily compressed JPEGs can introduce color banding that throws off extraction — if the palette looks off, try a PNG or less-compressed version of the same image.
- Images with a large uniform background (white studio shots, solid-color product photos) will have one dominant neutral that fills a swatch slot; crop tight to the subject if you only want the accent colors.
- The algorithm always extracts exactly 6 colors regardless of how many distinct colors the image actually contains.