Pixel Color Picker

What Is the Image Color Picker?

Need to match a color from a photo, screenshot, or design file exactly? This tool lets you click any pixel in an uploaded image and instantly reads that exact pixel's color, showing it in HEX, RGB, and HSL formats -- all three of the ways colors are commonly specified in design and code.

How to Use This Tool

Upload an image, then click anywhere on it. The exact color at that pixel appears immediately in HEX (#RRGGBB), RGB (red/green/blue values), and HSL (hue/saturation/lightness) formats, each with a copy button.

How the Color Reading Works

Practical Uses

Designers matching a brand color exactly from a reference photo or existing design asset. Developers grabbing a precise color value from a mockup to use in CSS. Anyone who needs the exact color code of something they can see in an image but don't have the original design file for.

Important Notes

Getting the Most Accurate Reading

The value you get is only as trustworthy as the pixel you click. Photographs rarely contain a single flat color: a blue wall in a photo is really thousands of slightly different blues caused by lighting, sensor noise, and compression. Clicking two neighboring pixels in the same wall can return two noticeably different codes. If you want the color that best represents an area, click several spots in that area and compare the results, then choose the one that sits in the middle of the range.

• Zoom the image in your own viewer or upload a cropped version, so the region you care about is large and easy to click precisely.
• Avoid the edges of shapes and text. Anti-aliased edges blend the shape color with the background, so an edge pixel is a mixture that matches neither.
• Prefer PNG screenshots over JPEG when you have the choice. PNG stores pixels without lossy compression, so a flat brand color usually reads back cleanly.
• Remember that a photo shows a color as lit by the scene. A red mug in warm evening light will not read as the same red as the product's official brand color.

A Worked Example

Suppose you click a teal button in a screenshot and the tool reports rgb(0, 128, 128). To read this as HEX, convert each channel to base 16: 0 becomes 00, 128 becomes 80, and 128 becomes 80, giving #008080. In HSL the same color has a hue of 180 degrees (the middle of the cyan range), 100 percent saturation, and about 25 percent lightness. Now imagine you want a lighter hover state for that button. Working in HSL you can keep the hue at 180 and saturation at 100 percent and simply raise the lightness, for example to 35 percent, which is much easier than guessing which RGB numbers to change.

Choosing Between the Three Formats

• Use HEX when pasting into CSS, design tools, or brand guidelines, where the six-digit code is the most common convention.
• Use RGB when you need to add transparency in code, for example rgba with the same three channel values plus an alpha number, or when a library asks for separate channel values.
• Use HSL when you want to build variations of a color, such as lighter tints, darker shades, or a less saturated version, because each of those is a change to just one number.

Limits and Things to Watch For

Screens differ. The tool reads the numeric value stored in the file, not how your particular monitor happens to display it, so the same code may look slightly different on another device. Images that embed a color profile other than standard sRGB can also render differently between programs, which means a picked value may not match what a color-managed design application shows. Finally, if the image has transparent areas, a clicked transparent pixel may report a color that does not reflect what appears on a colored page behind it. For print work, note that these are screen color values; converting to print inks needs separate color management with your printer or design software.

Frequently Asked Questions