Random Color Generator

How to get a color palette from an image

Drop a photo on the From image tab and the tool returns its 5–8 dominant colors with the share of the picture each one covers, without uploading the photo anywhere. The image is read from your device into a small canvas (at most 200 px on the long side, so even a 12-megapixel photo becomes a few thousand pixels and the analysis takes milliseconds), its pixels are grouped by median cut and refined with a few k-means passes, and each group's average becomes one swatch, sorted from the most to the least common. Transparent pixels in a PNG are ignored.

The photo only ever exists as a temporary object URL inside this browser tab: it is released as soon as you replace it or leave the page, there is no image API on this site, and nothing about the picture is written to storage or sent to analytics. Tap a swatch to copy its HEX, or press Use as palette to carry the colors over to the Generate tab, where you can lock the ones you want, regenerate the rest in a style, check contrast, export CSS or save the palette for later.

1. Open the From image tab and drop a photo, or tap the box to pick one. A sample photo is shown until you do.
2. The tool draws a small copy (at most 200 px on the long side) on a canvas in your browser, groups its pixels and shows 6 dominant colors with the share of the picture each one covers; set 5–8 colors with the slider.
3. Tap a color to copy its HEX, or press Use as palette to send all of them to the Generate tab, unlocked, where you can lock, regenerate, export and save them.

Looking for the image tab by name? /tools/color-palette-from-image opens this page on it; /tools/random-color-palette opens the Generate tab. Want the photo itself in a shape rather than its colors? The circle crop image and the heart photo frame crop a picture in the browser, like this page.

Color harmony rules

A color harmony rule picks hues at fixed distances on the color wheel so the colors look like they belong together. Set Style to Harmony and choose one under Advanced:

• Analogous: hues next to each other on the wheel, 30° apart (blue, blue-green, green): calm and natural, easy to read.
• Complementary: two hues opposite each other, 180° apart (orange and blue): the strongest contrast, good for one accent against a base.
• Triadic: three hues evenly spaced, 120° apart (red, yellow, blue): lively and balanced when one hue leads and the others support.
• Split-complementary: a base hue plus the two hues either side of its complement, at 150° and 210°: the punch of complementary with less tension.
• Monochrome: one hue in several lightnesses, from dark to light: always harmonious, so it suits backgrounds, charts and type.

Working inside Canva? Color Harmony, our Canva app, applies the same rules to the colors of the design you have open: try Color Harmony in Canva.

HEX, RGB and HSL

HEX, RGB and HSL are three ways of writing the same color, and every swatch on this page can be copied in each:

• HEX: six hexadecimal digits after a #, two each for red, green and blue (#ff6b6b): the form CSS, design tools and brand guides use most.
• RGB: the same three channels as numbers from 0 to 255 (rgb(255, 107, 107)): what screens actually mix, handy in code that blends or compares colors.
• HSL: hue as degrees on the color wheel, saturation and lightness as percentages (hsl(0, 100%, 71%)): the easiest to reason about when you want a lighter, duller or opposite version of a color.

Mocking up the rest of a page at the same time? The lorem ipsum generator gives dummy text and placeholder images, and the password generator fills a sign-up form with realistic sample passwords, both without uploading anything.

Color of the day

The color of the day is one 5-color palette per calendar day, the same for everyone who opens the page on that date, with a small prompt such as "Draw something using only these 5 colors". It is computed from the date (your local date, as YYYY-MM-DD) with a fixed seed in your browser, so there is no server, no account and nothing to wait for; the harmony rule and every color follow from the date.

Press I made it when you have finished the day's challenge and the page counts your streak ("3 days in a row"), kept in this browser's local storage. Miss a day and the streak starts again from zero, with your best run still shown. The challenge log under the palette is a month calendar: every past day shows its palette, finished days get a check, and tapping one opens it for practice (practice days never change the streak); tomorrow's palette is not shown until tomorrow.

Daily color palette challenge

The daily color palette challenge is one 5-color palette a day for everyone: make a drawing, painting, pixel piece or design with only those colors, post it, and come back tomorrow for the next one. Working with a limited palette is a classic art exercise (fewer colors means fewer decisions and a stronger mood), and daily color prompts already have their own hashtags, like Huevember every November.

Share challenge draws a card with the day's swatches, their HEX codes, the date and the prompt (story 1080 × 1920 or post 1080 × 1350) and a link such as /tools/random-color-generator#day=2026-11-12 that holds only the date, so friends or your art Discord open exactly the same palette. When you have finished, Add your piece reads your artwork on a small canvas in your browser, checks which of the 5 colors it uses ("You used 4 of 5 colors") and Share my piece makes an entry card with your art, the palette and the count. Press I made it to keep your streak, and Share my month turns the month's finished palettes into one recap card.

Running the challenge with a class or a group? The random team generator splits people into teams, and the classroom timer times a 20-minute speed paint.

Is my photo uploaded?

No: the whole tool is client-side. Colors are generated in your browser, the photo on the From image tab and the artwork you add for a daily entry card are read into a canvas on your device and never sent anywhere or saved (there is no image API on this site; for an entry only the number of colors used is kept), and your settings, saved palettes, undo history and streak live in this browser's local storage under one key (qrdy.color.v1). Analytics record only settings and counts (mode, size, style, the number of colors, a streak range), never a palette name, a color code or anything about your photo; color codes appear in the share link only when you make one. If your browser blocks storage, the tool still works and tells you that palettes will not be kept.