The Plaid Studio / Free tools / Colour palette from image
Colour palette from an image
Drop a photo, a fabric swatch or a mood board and get its main colours: hex and RGB codes, how much of the image each one covers, and the nearest textile colour name — navy, oatmeal, bottle green, rust — so you can talk about it with a mill or a client. Or type a hex code to name a single colour. Runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Name a colour
How the palette is found
The image is scaled down and its pixels are grouped by colour with k-means clustering in a perceptual colour space (CIELAB), so the groups follow what the eye sees rather than raw RGB numbers. Each swatch is the average of one group, ordered by how much of the image it covers. The name is the nearest of about sixty everyday textile colour words, measured in the same space — a description to talk with, not a dye recipe.
For a woven check, a palette is only half the story: where two colours cross, the weave makes a third. The guide to choosing a palette for textile patterns covers that, and how to specify colour in textiles covers what to send a mill.
Questions
How do I get a colour palette from an image?
Drop the image on the tool above. It groups the pixels into the number of colours you choose and shows each colour's hex code, its share of the image and its nearest textile colour name.
Are the names Pantone colours?
No. They are everyday textile colour words such as navy, oatmeal or rust, chosen as the nearest match. For production, send hex or Lab values and a physical swatch, and agree any colour system with the mill.
Why is a colour in my photo missing from the palette?
Small accents can be absorbed into a larger nearby group. Raise the number of colours to separate them.
Is my image uploaded?
No. The colours are worked out in your browser.