Color palette from video: extract colors from a frame

How to get a palette from your video

1. Click Choose video or image and open a clip your browser can play, or a still frame.
2. Move the Frame slider to the shot you want.
3. Under Sample, choose This frame for the frame on screen, or Across the clip to sample several frames. For the second, set From and To around the scene and choose the Number of frames to take between them (12 to start with, up to 60).
4. Set Number of colors, from 3 to 12. Six is a good first try.
5. Use Sort by to order the swatches by Share (how much of the picture each color covers), Hue or Lightness.
6. Take the result with you: Copy hex list, Download palette card (PNG), Download CSV or Download GIMP palette (.gpl). Save this frame (PNG) saves the frame itself.

One frame or the whole scene

A single frame shows one moment. If a red car crosses the shot, a one-frame palette can end up mostly red. Across the clip takes frames spread evenly from From to To and pools them, so the palette describes the scene rather than one instant. Keep the range inside one scene. Across a cut, colors from both shots mix into one palette.

How the colors are picked

The tool works on a smaller copy of each frame, at most 256 px on the long side, and groups similar pixels together with k-means clustering. Each swatch is the average of one group, and its share is the part of the sampled pixels in that group. The grouping happens in OKLab, a color space designed, in its author's words, to do "a good job at predicting perceived lightness, chroma and hue". Two colors that look alike end up in the same group more reliably than they would by comparing raw RGB numbers. The starting points are chosen the same way every time, so the same frame and settings always give the same palette.

Because each color is weighted by area, a small bright detail, such as a neon sign in a dark street, may not get a swatch of its own. Raise Number of colors to give smaller areas a chance.

Using the palette

• Hex list: paste the codes into any color picker that takes hex values, in your editor, a design app or a document.
• Palette card: a PNG with the frame and the swatches, each labeled with its hex code, ready for a mood board, a pitch deck or a message to a client.
• CSV: each color's hex code, RGB values and share, for a spreadsheet or a style guide.
• GIMP palette (.gpl): GIMP's documentation lists its own .gpl format among the palettes it imports, and Krita's palette docker also imports GIMP palettes. The .gpl format holds 8-bit sRGB colors without transparency, which is what the tool produces.

To see how a look would change the same shot, save the frame with Save this frame (PNG). Then follow Try LUTs on this frame to the LUT previewer and open the saved PNG there. The two pages don't share files with each other, so the frame only goes where you open it.

Limits

• Your browser decodes the video to 8-bit sRGB pixels before the tool sees them. Small differences from your editor's scopes are normal.
• Log footage gives the palette of the flat log picture, and HDR footage gives the palette of the browser's standard-range version of it. Neither shows the graded look you intend. For a palette of the finished grade, export a graded still or clip from your editor and open that.
• Browser seeking isn't frame-exact, so the frame shown can be a neighbor of the one you aimed for. The palette always comes from the frame you see. If you need one exact frame, export it as a still from your editor.
• The video has to be a format your browser can play. Some HEVC and ProRes files won't open. A PNG or JPG still works.
• It finds up to 12 colors and samples up to 60 frames at a time.

Your files stay on your device

Your video is read and sampled by your browser on your computer. The swatches, the palette card and the other downloads are made in the page, and nothing is uploaded.