Color palette generator

Drop in an image and this tool analyzes its pixels and returns a set of its most common colors as HEX swatches. You choose how many swatches you want — 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, or 12 — and the result is ordered from the most frequently occurring color to the least. Click any swatch to copy its HEX, or copy the whole set at once.

It is the fast way to answer "what colors is this image actually made of?" — pulling a starting palette from a photo, deriving a scheme from a piece of inspiration, sampling the dominant tones of a brand image, or building a mood board. Where the single-pixel picker answers "what color is this exact spot," the palette generator answers "what are the main colors overall."

Under the hood it groups similar colors into buckets and counts how many pixels fall into each, then returns the busiest buckets as representative colors. To stay fast it samples a subset of pixels rather than every one, which is plenty for a representative palette but means the result is an approximation, not a pixel-perfect census.

Because swatches are ranked by how much of the image they cover, the first colors are the backgrounds and large areas; small but important accents — a logo highlight or a single bright object — may sit lower in the list or not appear at all in a small palette. If a color you expected is missing, ask for more swatches, or crop the image to the region you care about so that color makes up a larger share.

Fewer swatches give you the broad strokes — good for a quick two-or-three-color scheme. More swatches surface subtler tones but can include near-duplicates of the dominant color, since photographs contain thousands of slightly different shades. A common approach is to generate a larger set, then keep the handful that are visually distinct and useful.

The values are honest readings of the source pixels, so a heavily filtered or compressed image yields a palette that reflects those artifacts. For a precise single color rather than a set, switch to the Image Color Picker and click the exact pixel you want.

The analysis happens entirely in your browser — the image is drawn to a canvas and its colors are counted on your own device. On this site, your image is not uploaded to our servers and nothing is stored once you close or reload the page, so pulling a palette from an unreleased design or a private photo stays on your machine.

There is no image file to download; the output is the HEX values you copy. If a palette looks off — too many near-identical greys, or a missing accent — it usually reflects the image itself: low contrast, heavy compression, or a dominant background. Try a different crop or a higher swatch count, and use the single-pixel picker when you need one exact color instead of a set.