Color Picker from Image

A color picker from image is an essential tool for designers, developers, and anyone who needs to identify exact colors from photographs, screenshots, or artwork. Instead of guessing hex codes by eye, this tool lets you upload any image and click on a pixel to instantly get its precise color value in HEX, RGB, and HSL formats.

The ToolChemy color picker from image tool above works entirely in your browser. Your image is never uploaded to a server — it is processed locally using the HTML5 Canvas API. This means your photos and designs stay completely private.

How to Pick Colors from an Image

Using this color picker from image tool takes just a few steps:

1. Upload your image. Click the upload area or drag and drop any image file (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, or SVG) onto the tool.
2. Click on a color. Move your cursor over the image and click on the pixel whose color you want to extract. The tool instantly shows the exact HEX, RGB, and HSL values.
3. Copy the color code. Click the "Copy" button next to any color format to copy it to your clipboard. Paste it directly into your CSS, design tool, or color field.
4. Build a palette. Keep clicking different areas of the image. Each picked color is added to a palette strip below the output area, storing up to 10 colors. Click any palette swatch to recall its HEX code.

Why Use an Image Color Picker

There are many situations where extracting colors from an image is the fastest and most accurate approach:

• Web design: Match your website's color scheme to a brand photo, logo, or inspiration image. Instead of manually creating colors, pick them directly from the source material.
• Branding: When a client sends you a mood board or reference image, use the color picker to extract the exact shades they want for their brand identity.
• Photo editing: Identify specific colors in a photograph so you can use them for retouching, compositing, or creating complementary graphics.
• Accessibility: Check the actual colors used in a screenshot to verify contrast ratios meet WCAG guidelines.
• Learning: Study color palettes from artwork, nature photography, or film stills by extracting and analyzing the colors used.

Understanding HEX, RGB, and HSL Color Formats

When you pick a color, this tool shows it in three formats. Each serves different purposes, and understanding them helps you work more efficiently with colors in any context.

HEX Color Codes

HEX is a six-character code preceded by a hash symbol, like #FF5733. The first two characters represent red, the middle two represent green, and the last two represent blue. Each pair ranges from 00 (none) to FF (full intensity). HEX is the most common format in CSS and HTML. If you work with hex codes regularly, our hex color picker provides additional conversion and reference tools.

RGB Values

RGB defines a color using three numbers from 0 to 255, representing the red, green, and blue channels. For example, rgb(255, 87, 51) is the same orange as #FF5733. RGB is used in CSS, JavaScript, and most programming contexts. It maps directly to how screens physically display color — by mixing red, green, and blue light.

HSL Values

HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Hue is a degree on the color wheel (0-360), saturation is a percentage of color intensity, and lightness is how bright or dark the color is. HSL is often more intuitive for humans because you can easily create lighter or darker variants of a color by adjusting just the lightness value. CSS supports HSL natively with hsl(14, 100%, 60%).

Building Color Palettes from Photos

One of the most effective uses of an image color picker is building cohesive color palettes from real-world photographs. Nature photos, architecture, food photography, and fine art all contain carefully balanced color relationships that you can extract and reuse in your designs.

Here is a practical workflow for building a palette from a photo:

1. Choose a reference image that captures the mood or style you want.
2. Upload it to the color picker tool.
3. Click the dominant color first — this is usually the most prominent color in the image and will become your primary palette color.
4. Click 2-3 secondary colors that complement the dominant one.
5. Click 1-2 accent colors — small pops of contrasting color that add visual interest.
6. Review your palette strip. You now have 5-6 colors extracted from the image that naturally work together because they already coexist in the photograph.

This approach is faster and more reliable than manually choosing colors from a color wheel, because the relationships between the colors have already been validated by the photograph itself.

How This Tool Works Technically

When you upload an image, it is read using the browser's FileReader API and drawn onto an HTML5 <canvas> element. The canvas provides access to individual pixel data through the getImageData() method, which returns the RGBA (red, green, blue, alpha) values of any pixel at a given x,y coordinate.

When you click on the image, the tool calculates the exact canvas coordinate based on your click position, reads the pixel data at that point, and converts the raw RGB values into HEX and HSL notation using standard color conversion algorithms. Everything runs in JavaScript on your device — no network requests are made.

For more advanced color work, including choosing colors visually and generating color harmonies, try our HTML color picker tool. If you need to solve math problems alongside your design work, our scientific calculator online is also free and browser-based.

Tips for Accurate Color Picking

• Zoom in on your image first. If you need to pick a color from a small area, zoom into the image in an editor before uploading to get better precision.
• Pick from flat areas. Gradients, shadows, and highlights create variation within small regions. For the truest representation of a color, pick from a flat, evenly-lit area of the image.
• Use high-quality images. JPEG compression creates artifacts that blend colors at edges. For the most accurate results, use PNG or lossless formats when possible.
• Check your monitor calibration. Colors on screen depend on your monitor's color profile. What you see may look different on another display. For critical color work, use a calibrated monitor.