Image Palette Extractor
Turn a browser-compatible image into a compact set of frequently occurring colours. Choose between 3 and 20 swatches, then click any HEX value to copy it. The image is decoded, sampled and analysed locally in your browser.
How to extract a palette
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1
Choose an image
Select a browser-compatible image up to 30 MB and 24 megapixels.
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2
Set the palette size
Choose from 3 to 20 colour swatches.
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3
Review the estimate
The tool samples the image and ranks frequent RGB colour groups.
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4
Copy a colour
Click a swatch to copy its six-digit HEX value.
What the extracted palette represents
This extractor is designed for quick colour reference, not colour-science measurement. It scales the decoded image to fit within a 100 × 100 pixel sample, ignores fully transparent pixels and groups each red, green and blue channel into steps of 16. It then returns the most frequent groups as HEX values.
Choosing the number of colours
| Swatches | Useful starting point |
|---|---|
| 3-5 | A simple mood or small interface palette |
| 6-10 | A photo with several subjects or materials |
| 11-20 | A broader reference set with more similar shades |
Important limitations
- The result is frequency-based RGB quantisation, not k-means, median cut or perceptual clustering.
- Small accent colours may rank below a large background, even when the accent attracts more attention.
- Resampling and 16-level channel groups make the values approximations rather than exact original pixels.
- Browser colour management, JPEG artefacts and gradients can change which buckets receive the most samples.
- An animated image is analysed from the frame decoded by the browser when it is loaded.
For an exact colour at a specific point, use an image colour picker instead. For design work, treat this palette as a starting point and check contrast before using colours for text or controls.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The file is decoded and analysed in your browser. During the multi-step flow it is kept temporarily in browser storage so the next page can restore it, and that temporary draft expires after about 30 minutes.
The ranking follows sampled area, not visual importance. A large wall or sky can therefore outrank a small, vivid object.
Not necessarily. Each RGB channel is rounded down to a 16-value bucket, so the swatches are representative groups. Use a point colour picker when you need one exact pixel.
A flat or transparent image may contain fewer distinct non-transparent colour groups than the selected palette size.
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