One of the most important steps of any graphic or web design project is to create an appropriate color palette to use across the entire design.
Coming up with a professional and creative color palette can also be a very time-consuming task. We’re here to make that process easier for you.
In this post, we feature some of the best color palette generators you can use to create an effective color palette for any type of design with just a few clicks.
The tool lets you make color palettes using three different systems: Swatches, Color Picker, and Mass Editor. Each option provides you with its own benefits. Once you pick the base colors, you can also take it to the next level by exploring different tints, shades, and color harmonies from an extensive list as well. Free Color Picker is a power UWP color picker. With this tool you can easily pick color from screen or an image file. It is very easy to use. You press the System Print Screen key or Win + Shift + S keys to capture a screen image to the clipboard.
Some of these generators will even help you find color palettes based on different trends like flat color and material color design. They also include hex code you can copy to add proper color codes when designing websites as well. Best of all, they are completely free to use.
- An Image Color Code Picker is a color code picker tool that allows webmasters and graphic designers to grab the color palette from an image for free. It allows anyone — even if they're beginners — to upload an image on the web platform so easily. And as a result, they'll get the unique color scheme used on the image uploaded.
- Color Picker tool helps web designers, photographers, graphic designers to pick the right color and get the code of different color shades quickly! A color picker (also color chooser or color tool) is a graphical user interface widget, usually found within graphics software or online, used to select colors and sometimes to create color schemes.
4 Tips For Creating Professional Color Palettes
Before we get to the list, let’s learn the basics of creating more effective color palettes.
1. Different Types Of Color Palettes
First and foremost you should be aware of the four main types of color palettes out there.
- Monochromatic: Monochromatic color palettes are the ones you create using different shades of the same color. These are quite easy to make and are commonly used by many popular brands.
- Analogous: Analogous palettes consist of colors that are close to each other on the color wheel. If you pick the main color then the colors right next to it can be picked as secondary colors for this type of palettes.
- Complementary: Similar to Analogous, Complementary palettes are comprised of colors that are opposite to each other in the color wheel.
- Triadic: Triadic palettes are made of three main colors. These color palettes are best for creating clearly visible contrast in designs.
In addition, you should also learn and understand the color theory as well.
2. Consider The Color Psychology
There’s a certain factor of psychology involved in colors. According to color psychology, different colors have a strong effect on evoking specific emotions in humans. For example, the color black is associated with elegance, mystery, and authority. This is why the color is mainly used by luxury brands.
Consider applying the color psychology when picking colors for your color palette.
3. Using Color Trends
It’s important to also consider color trends when creating a color palette. Especially if you’re making a design for a modern brand or a startup, trends play an important role in appealing to current audiences.
Trends are constantly changing and there are many different trends you can apply to your color palettes like the flat color trend, material design colors, metro colors, and more.
4. Find Inspiration From Real Photos
The best colors are found in real-life. If you prefer a more realistic and nature-inspired color palette, you can use real photos to find inspiration for your color palette. There are tools and apps that allow you to generate color palettes based on photos and images as well.
Without further ado, let’s start exploring the color palette generators, shall we?
01. BrandColors
If you’ve ever wondered about the color palettes popular brands use or wanted to steal the color palette from your favorite brand, BrandColors is a website worth keeping bookmarked. It features a massive collection of color palettes used by popular brands.
02. Coolors.co
Coolors.co is one of the easy to use color palette generators that’s ideal for beginners. It lets you create color palettes from scratch or explore palettes made by others. The tool also includes a useful option for uploading images to pick the base colors from photos.
By creating an account on the site, you can save your palettes on the cloud and create your own collections to access later as well.
03. Color Hunt
Color Hunt is a massive collection of color palettes made by designers. It includes many different types of color palettes that you can explore based on popularity or trends. Since these color palettes are already crafted by other designers, you can easily pick a palette and start your design.
The tool also lets you create your own color palettes as well. However, it might require a bit of experience to find the best colors for your palette.
04. Colormind
Colormind is another beginner-friendly color palette generator that includes a very cool feature that allows you to live preview your color palette applied to an example design. It also lets you choose between material and paper color designs as well as the ability to switch between website and template designs.
In addition to generating color palettes with just one-click, Colormind lets you create color palettes from images as well.
05. Color Designer
Color Designer is a slightly advanced color palette generator that features many unique tools for creating professional color palettes. The tool lets you make color palettes using three different systems: Swatches, Color Picker, and Mass Editor. Each option provides you with its own benefits.
Once you pick the base colors, you can also take it to the next level by exploring different tints, shades, and color harmonies from an extensive list as well.
06. Paletton
Paletton is another advanced color scheme designing tool that comes with a more complex set of options for creating color palettes. At first sight, the tool may seem quite daunting to understand. However, it’s one of the few tools that lets you create color palettes based on the main color palette types, including monochromatic and triad.
This tool is most suitable for advanced designers who like to experiment and test different types of color palettes and color schemes.
07. Canva Palette Generator
Canva’s color palette generator features very basic functionality but it does its job perfectly. The tool is simple, you just upload a photo or an image to the site and the tool automatically generates a color palette based on the main colors from the image. Then you can copy the color codes with just a single click.
Even though the tool offers limited features, it’s ideal for finding the base colors for creating a natural color palette.
08. Adobe Color Wheel
This is an advanced color palette creator made by Adobe for professional designers. This tool also allows you to create color palettes based on monochromatic, triad, analogous, and other palette types. In addition, you can upload an image to extract colors from it as well.
09. Khroma
Khroma is a modern color palette generator that uses AI technology to come up with creative color palettes. First, you have to select 50 different colors to train the AI to generate color palettes based on your choices. Then you’ll be able to choose from many color combinations generated by the AI to find the right color palette for your project.
10. ColorSpace
ColorSpace is yet another easy to use palette generator that allows you to create color palettes with just one-click. All you have to do is enter a main color hex code to the website and then hit the Generate button. Then the tool generates different styles of color palettes along with matching gradients.
11. Color Tool
Download Free Color Picker Tool
Color Tool is an advanced color palette maker designed for web and user interface designers. The tool allows you to create material design color palettes based on user interface and accessibility categories. A useful feature of this tool is how it offers a live preview as you select colors for the palette.
12. Collor
Collor is yet another simple color palette generator that offers a simpler experience in creating color palettes. Simply select main and secondary colors and it will generate a selection of color palettes for you to choose from and customize. The only downside to using this tool is that it requires Flash to be enabled in your browser.
13. ColourLovers
ColourLovers features a collection of color palettes created by other designers. You can either choose a pre-made palette from the list or create a palette of your own. The color palette creator also offers options for making basic and advanced palettes as well as an option for extracting colors from a photo.
14. Colourcode
Free Online Color Picker Tool
Colourcode is a simple color palette maker that you can use to create unique color schemes by simply hovering your mouse cursor around on the screen. Once you find a color simple left-clicking selects it and then you can move on to the next color. The tool also allows you to find colors based on monochrome, analogic, triad, and other types as well.
15. Data Color Picker
This color picker is also a great tool you can use to create color palettes. It allows you to pick colors that fit in with light and dark backgrounds and it also features options to select single hue and divergent color schemes as well.
Want to learn how to pick colors? Then be sure to check out our guide on how to pair colors like a pro as well as our article on designing with a monochromatic color scheme.
Get the color information of pixels in your image by using the online image color picker in the free online image editor on gifgit.com. Click in the image or drag to update the displayed color information in the tool options bar. The color information is displayed in four color formats including the hexadecimal format for the web. Upload or use a sample image to use the color picker tool.Color formats displayed:
- RGB (red, green, blue)
- Hexadecimal (#000000 - #ffffff)
- HSV (hue, saturation, value)
- HSL (hue, saturation, lightness)
- Upload an image using the form above.
- Select the mode for the color picker tool.
- Click or drag the mouse in the image to select the desired color.
Free Color Picker Tool Online
| Features | Gifgit Editor | Lunapic |
|---|---|---|
| Browser based editing (No software download) | Yes | Yes |
| Layers | Yes | No |
| Layer Masks (Non-Destructive Editing) | Yes | No |
| Selection tools | Yes | No |
| Undo History List | Yes | No |