How to Extract Colors from an Image — Free Online Tool (2026)

You can extract the dominant colours from any image for free using brevio Image Color Extractor. The tool samples pixels directly in your browser and returns hex codes with coverage percentages — no upload required.

How to Extract Colours from an Image

1. Open brevio Image Color Extractor. No account required.
2. Drop your image or click to choose a file. JPG, PNG, and WebP are all supported. The image is read into browser memory only.
3. Review the colour swatches. The tool returns the top 10 most frequent colours with hex codes and percentage coverage.
4. Click any swatch to copy the hex code to your clipboard.

How colour extraction works

The tool reads every 4th pixel (a 2×2 stride across the image) to sample a representative subset without slowing down the browser. Each sampled pixel's RGB values are quantised to 6 bits per channel (64 possible values per channel, or 262,144 possible colours). Pixels that map to the same bucket are counted. The top 10 buckets by count are returned, with the displayed colour being the centroid value of that bucket. This approach is fast and does not require a clustering algorithm like k-means.

Quantisation vs k-means colour extraction

Quantisation-based extraction is faster and deterministic — it always returns the same colours for the same image. K-means clustering (used by tools like Colorthief) converges to perceptually distinct colours that may better represent a palette, but it is slower and results can vary between runs. For most use cases — identifying brand colours in a photo, matching a design to a reference image, or checking which colours dominate a UI screenshot — quantisation is sufficient.

Common uses for colour extraction

• Brand analysis: Identify the dominant colours in a competitor's marketing material or website screenshot.
• Design matching: Extract colours from a reference photo to use in a UI or print design.
• Accessibility checking: Confirm which colours are most prominent before testing contrast ratios.
• Art direction: Quickly understand the colour temperature and saturation profile of a photograph.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do the extracted colours not exactly match what I see?

The quantisation rounds RGB values to 6-bit precision. A pixel with R=200, G=50, B=30 is mapped to R=192, G=48, B=28. The displayed hex is the bucket centre, not the exact original pixel value. For precise eyedropper-style extraction, use an image editor or browser DevTools colour picker.

Can I extract fewer than 10 colours?

The tool always returns the top 10 by frequency. If your image has fewer than 10 distinct colour groups after quantisation (e.g., a simple two-colour logo), fewer entries will be returned.

Does the tool handle transparent pixels?

Semi-transparent pixels are included in the count but their alpha channel is ignored during RGB extraction. Fully transparent pixels (alpha = 0) still contribute to colour buckets. If your image has large transparent regions, the extracted colours may include the canvas background colour (typically black).

Is my image uploaded to a server?

No. The extraction runs entirely in your browser using the HTML Canvas API. No data is sent over the network.