Picking the right colors is an important part of any design task. Whether you're developing a logo, assembling a presentation, creating a website or just wanting to liven up your newest social network visuals, having the ability to easily and accurately choose colors is necessary.
That's why online color picker tools have ended up being very useful resources for all kinds of designers and imaginative specialists. These online applications permit you to remove shades from images, identify colors by hex code or RGB worth, create shade combinations, and a lot more.
In this thorough overview, we'll highlight the most effective online shade picker devices available and showcase their standout features. We'll cover both cost-free and paid alternatives so you can discover the ideal color pickers to fulfill your specific requirements. Let's dive in!
Prior to we enter the top shade picker suggestions, let's talk about why you must be utilizing these devices, to begin with:
Accuracy - Unlike trying to choose a shade by sight alone, online shade pickers provide you the precise hex code and RGB values. This gets rid of any uncertainty.
Efficiency - With a couple of clicks, you can draw out shades from photos, produce color patterns, and more. On the internet, color pickers save you tons of time over manual color options.
Flexibility - Modern color picker tools are offered directly in your internet browser. This makes them quickly accessible from any kind of tool. Several additionally have browser expansions or mobile applications.
Motivation - Online shade pickers typically consist of pre-programmed palettes and suggested color mixes to trigger creative concepts.
Consistency - Utilizing the very same online color picker tool throughout projects brings about greater color consistency in your job.
With all those benefits, it's simple to see why having a go-to shade picker is a should for creating digital web content and layouts.
For many people, complimentary shade picker software is the best place to begin. Here are some superior free alternatives:
As its name suggests, Adobe Color comes straight from the software application Adobe. It's totally free to make use of and doesn't also call for signing up for an account.
Trick Features:
Assimilation with Adobe applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and XD.
With an instinctive user interface and seamless assimilation with other Adobe programs, it's easy to see why Adobe Shade is just one of the most preferred cost-free shade pickers readily available.
Coolors bills itself as "the super fast color palettes generator for cool designers." It delivers on that promise with a slick interface where you can quickly build out color schemes.
Key Features:
The overall ease of use combined with great accessibility features makes Coolors stand out as one of the best free color palette tools.
While best known as a graphic design platform, Canva also packs a robust built-in color picker that's free to use without a Canva account.
Key Features:
For those already using Canva for other graphic projects, the built-in color features make perfect sense. But even non-Canva users will find value in the excellent color extraction tool.
Pikka is a unique color palette generator using images from creative common sources like museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions.
Key Features:
If you want to easily generate artistic color themes that are also accessible, Pikka is one of the best free online color picker sites around.
While the free options we covered provide tremendous value, paid color-picking apps and browser extensions take things up another level. Here are some top premium options to consider:
SEOToolsPark markets itself is the "AI-powered color assistant". It uses advanced machine learning technology to help you search colors, generate palettes, and extract custom themes from images.
Key Features:
For designers seeking more advanced, intelligent color capabilities, Khroma is a top choice combining great technology with intuitive functionality.
If you're looking for desktop color picker software for Windows, PicPick is a highly-rated option combining a color identifier tool with image annotation features.
Key Features:
For Windows power users wanting precise desktop-based color selection capabilities alongside other graphic utilities, PicPick warrants serious consideration.
Stark offers an entire platform built around streamlining the design and digital asset workflow. Their browser-based tools and mobile apps integrate directly with design platforms. A key component is their intuitive color capabilities.
Key Features:
For design team leaders seeking to unite assets, manage workflows, and standardize color use, Stark provides robust capabilities starting from their advanced color tools.
With the wide range of excellent color picker options highlighted, how do you select the one(s) most suited to your needs?
Here is a comparison chart looking at some of the key features and capabilities modern online color pickers provide:
| Feature | Adobe Color | Colors | Canva | Pikka | Khroma | PicPick | Stark |
| Image Color Extraction | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Accessible Color Contrast Check | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Generate Color Palettes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Hex Values | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RGB Values | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Other Color Codes (CMYK, HSL, etc.) | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Create/Save Palettes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Mobile App | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Browser Extension | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop Application | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No |
| Price | Free | Free | Free | Free | $3.99+ monthly | One-time $19.99 | $9+ monthly |
With this full comparison, you can better select online color picker tools based on your preferred platform, needed technical capabilities, target price point, and other project requirements. Most designers utilize both highly functional free and more advanced paid tools based on the specifics of each project.
An online color picker is a powerful tool. But simply having access to one isn't enough to guarantee color success in your designs. You need to leverage your color picker strategically for maximum visual impact.
Here are some professional tips and best practices:
By incorporating professional best practices into your selection process, your online color picker becomes exponentially more effective at building palettes perfectly suited to your design work.
A: A color picker is a tool that allows you to select a color on the screen and retrieve detailed information about that color, like its hex code or RGB values. Color pickers provide an accurate way to capture colors visually.
A: Color pickers save you time and guesswork in determining exact colors. They make replicating the same color across projects easier and allow you to precisely communicate color selections with team members and clients.
A: You can use a color picker to extract colors from images, websites, or physical objects to reuse those colors in designs or other contexts. Color pickers are also helpful for creating color palettes, testing contrast ratios, converting between color formats like RGB and CMYK, and sampling colors to use while coding websites.
A: A color palette is a curated selection of colors used together harmoniously in designs, photos, web pages, and other visual materials. Color pickers often include tools for generating color palette ideas or customizing your own palettes.
A: Many color pickers provide suggested color harmonies like analogous, triadic, or complementary colors. You can also extract colors from imagery related to your project for palette inspiration. Grouping colors with sufficient contrast for accessibility is important.
A: Many online color pickers have mobile browser options or dedicated iOS/Android apps. Additionally, there are smartphone camera apps capable of sampling real-world colors for reuse elsewhere digitally. Most mobile color picker options allow saving and syncing palettes across devices.
Online color picker tools have evolved from basic hex code lookups into advanced applications harnessing technologies like machine learning and image recognition. Creative professionals now have a tremendous range of browser-based, mobile, and desktop color-picking options at their disposal.
Whether you're a DIY home crafter extracting colors from your latest Pinterest inspiration or a Fortune 500 brand designer ensuring your style guide meets company specifications, utilizing a modern color picker is now an essential best practice.
After reviewing all the features, benefits, and use cases, the question is no longer whether to use a dedicated color tool but rather determining which one(s) best meets your unique needs and budget.
Now that you have a full overview of the color picker landscape, you can start integrating these indispensable apps into your regular creative workflow. Mastering how to expertly select and consistently apply color themes will level up skills ranging from graphic design to web creation and everything in between.
So propel your next project from good to great by finally adding sleek, accurate online color pickers to your essential design toolkit. Your future color-coded creations will thank you!
