Capture Colors from
Any Image
Extracting the Essence of an Image
How pixel quantization turns complex photography into usable color palettes.
Photos often contain thousands of distinct unique colors. To reduce an image (like a sunset photo) down to a usable 5-color palette, we use an algorithm called K-Means Clustering. This process groups similar pixels together and mathematically finds the "center" color of each group.
Best Practices for Extraction
- Lighting Matters: Avoid photos with heavy shadows if you want clean UI colors. Shadows often extract as muddy grays.
- Focus on Subject: If you're extracting for a brand, choose images where the brand product is the dominant focal point.
- Vibrancy vs. Accuracy: Sometimes the mathematically dominant color is a boring beige background. Our "Vibrant" mode filters these out to find the accent colors that truly pop.
From Moodboard to Production
Interior designers and brand strategists have used this technique for decades ("Moodboarding"). By pulling colors directly from inspirational imagery, you ensure your design captures the exact *feeling* of the source material. You can check if your extracted colors meet readability standards using our Contrast Auditor.
Want to create more variations from your extracted colors? Use our Palette Generator to iterate on your findings.