Process up to 200 images per job — pick your settings once, run them all.
Drop a photo, painting, screenshot, or moodboard image; get back the 5–10 dominant colours with HEX values. Build palettes from your brand photography, sample tones from a favourite painting, or extract the colours of a sunset for a wallpaper-matching design system.
How extraction works
The tool clusters every pixel in the image by colour similarity (k-means in CIE Lab space, which approximates how humans perceive colour difference). The cluster centres become your dominant colours. You pick the cluster count (5 by default; up to 10 for richer images).
Lab-space clustering matters: doing it in raw RGB gives you visually-similar duplicates and misses subtle hue distinctions that the eye picks up. Lab matches human perception, so the palette feels right.
What you get back
- 5 (or 10) HEX swatches ranked by area covered.
- RGB and HSL for each colour.
- Palette swatch download as PNG (for sharing) or SVG (for design files).
- CSS variables snippet ready to paste into your stylesheet.
- Tailwind config snippet ready for tailwind.config.js.
Common workflows
- Brand palette from product photography. Upload your hero image; build the brand from those tones.
- Wallpaper-matched UI theme. Extract from your favourite wallpaper; use the palette as your app theme.
- Painting reference for digital art. Sample the master's palette before painting your own scene.
- Mood-board synthesis. Combine multiple references into one palette by extracting from each and merging the favourites.
Pair with related tools
Once you have a palette, build gradients between adjacent colours with Gradient Generator, or convert to print-ready CMYK with Color Converter. To pick a single colour from a specific spot in the image instead, use Color Picker.
Frequently asked questions
How many colours can I extract?
5 by default; up to 10. More than 10 starts giving you visual duplicates.
Why is my palette mostly grey/brown?
Photos with lots of natural lighting have dominant earth tones. To find the 'pop' colours, mask out the foreground or use a more vibrant source.
Does it work on logos?
Yes — solid-colour logos return their exact colours. Multi-colour logos return the dominant ones in proportion to their area.
Can I save palettes?
Sign in (free) and saved palettes appear in your library.
Why do my extracted colours look slightly off when I use them?
Browser colour profiles or CMYK conversion can shift colours. Use sRGB-aware tools throughout.
What about transparent PNGs?
Transparent pixels are excluded from the cluster — only visible pixels count.
Can I extract from a URL?
Premium accounts can paste an image URL directly.
Best image type for palettes?
Tightly-cropped, well-lit, in-focus images. Photos with junk in the corners (sky, walls, debris) can dominate the palette unexpectedly.
About Palette Extractor
Palette Extractor is a free online tool from Wallpapers.com that runs entirely in your browser — no install, no watermark, no email sign-up for the first try.
Extract the 5-10 dominant colors from any image.
How to use Palette Extractor
- Pick a colour from the swatch or paste a HEX / RGB value.
- Adjust the output — palette, contrast, complementary colours.
- Copy the value, or export the swatch as JSON.
When to use it
Common use cases include:
prepping images for web upload, e-commerce listings, social media platforms with format constraints, and converting files from one device or app to another.
Free vs Premium
Every visitor gets a free trial run; signed-in free users get a higher daily quota. Subscribe to
Premium
for unlimited runs, bulk processing up to 200 images per job, priority queue, and ad-free browsing.
Related tools
Looking for something slightly different? Try the
Color Picker from Image
,
Gradient Generator
or
Grayscale Converter
— or browse all
Color Tools tools.
