tool · beta · on-device
Drop a photo, get five hex codes. Click a swatch to copy. Slide diversity up if the palette looks samey. Download the swatches as a PNG — feed-ready, palette-card-shaped. Nothing uploads. For a real brand kit, grab a proper app.
Sorting the swatches…
Sorting the swatches…
where a quick palette earns its keep
for designers
Brand work begins with a feel, not a swatch grid. Drop a photo of the place, mood, or object that captures the feel — a kraft-paper journal, a moss-covered wall, a ceramic bowl — and the tool gives you the hex codes you'd otherwise pick by eye for an hour.
for collages
If a journal spread is going to feel cohesive, the tape, ink, and paper should pull from the photo. Drop your hero photo, get the palette, then pick the closest matches in the Washi Tape and Add Text tools. The page will read as 'curated' instead of 'pasted'.
for mood boards
Mood-board pinners get traction by adding mini-palettes underneath their pins — five color squares with hex codes. Run each board photo through this tool, download the palette PNG, paste under the photo. Looks researched, gets repinned.
for instagram
Travel and design accounts caption their photos with the palette they pulled out. Three to five hex codes is enough — readers screenshot for inspiration. The diversity slider lets you avoid 'five shades of dust' on grayed-out shots.
for art
Limited-palette painting practice — Bob Ross style — wants 5 colors picked from a real reference. This tool does the picking. Print the palette PNG, mix to match, paint only with those mixes. The constraint sharpens the work.
for brand
Drop a screenshot of a competitor's homepage and the dominant colors come out as hex codes. Useful for differentiation work — what NOT to look like — and for reference when their visual identity is well-resolved enough to learn from.
in case you're wondering
No. Pixels are read into a small in-browser canvas, bucketed, and the dominant colors are computed in JavaScript. Your photo never touches our servers — we don't run an image pipeline at all.
We resize the photo to 220 pixels wide, scan every pixel, bucket each into one of 512 RGB bins (8 levels per channel), and rank bins by frequency. The diversity filter then walks down the list and keeps a color only if it's far enough away from already-picked ones.
Because the photo is mostly five shades of beige! When the image has low color variety, the diversity filter can starve. Dragging the diversity slider down to 0 returns the raw top-N most-common bins; up to 80+ forces visually distinct picks even when they're rarer in the photo.
Yes — drag the palette size slider up to 8. More than 8 starts losing visual coherence; if you need a 12-color palette, run the photo twice with different diversity settings and merge the results.
Click any swatch. The hex code copies to your clipboard and the swatch label briefly says 'copied!'. To copy all five at once as a comma-separated list, hit the 'copy all' button in the toolbar.
A 1200×360 image with the swatches and hex codes baked in, ready to drop onto a Pinterest pin, Instagram caption, Notion page, or design document. The export uses paper-cream background to match your boards.
now what?
next →
Map the photo to two extracted palette colours.
Opennext →
Drop the subject onto a palette colour.
Opennext →
Caption in a colour from the palette.
Opennext →
Use the palette in a pin band or backdrop.
Opennext →
Use the palette in a banner background.
Opennext →
Recolour the photo in palette tones.
OpenCut the background out of any photo in one click.
OpenDrop your subject onto paper, gradient, or your own backdrop photo.
OpenDrop a word behind your subject, magazine-cover style.
OpenNine presets, one photo — vintage to cinematic.
OpenTri-X, Kodak Gold, Lomo — pick a roll, see the grain.
OpenComic dots, risograph red, punk-zine textures.
OpenPhoto to graphite drawing in two clicks.
OpenMap photo to two colors — Spotify, sunset, riso.
OpenMake real cities look like tabletop dioramas.
OpenSunset, lomo red, golden hour — bleed light into corners.
OpenVHS bands, anaglyph 3D, CRT scanlines, chromatic aberration.
OpenConvert any photo to typed characters.
OpenPure invert, cyanotype, blueprint, X-ray, darkroom, sepia negative.
OpenPhoto as tiles with grout-color gaps.
OpenBrightness, contrast, saturation, hue, blur — seven sliders.
OpenAny photo, wrapped in paper with a handwritten caption.
OpenFour photos, B&W mode, handwritten caption.
OpenTwo photos, side-by-side or stacked.
OpenPaper mat for prints, journals, framed walls.
OpenCircle, heart, star, arch — pick a cookie cutter.
OpenGreetings caption, faux stamp, postmark, paper texture.
OpenFloat a photo over paper for portfolios and mockups.
OpenDrop a photo, type a title, pick a layout. 1000×1500 native.
OpenX, LinkedIn, or YouTube cover with title overlay.
OpenHandwritten captions, magazine headers, or a quick scribble.
OpenStick paper-mood tape onto any photo.
OpenLED red, Kodak yellow, camcorder amber.
OpenCorner sign-off or full diagonal tile.
OpenHearts, stars, flowers, smileys, paper tags, HELLO labels.
OpenSquare for IG, 9:16 for stories, 2:3 for Pinterest.
OpenMirror a selfie, un-tilt a scan, turn a sideways shot upright.
OpeniPhone photos that open on everything.
OpenHide faces, plates, addresses — drag a patch over the spot.
OpenRemove GPS, camera info, timestamps before posting.
OpenSmaller JPG, WebP, or PNG — same look, less file.
OpenPrint-ready QR for menus, invites, journals, vCards.
OpenEyedropper a color in your photo, swap it for another.
OpenFor the real thing →
Five hex codes is a starting point. When you want a real brand system — type pairs, spacing scale, secondary palette, illustration style — a real design app handles it cleanly.