Where each tool fits in a project
Most color decisions happen in the same order, whatever the medium. First you gather: a reference photo, a client’s brand color, a painting you admire. The Image to Palette Extractor turns any picture into its dominant colors with their share of the image, which is often more revealing than the colors you think are there.
Then you plan. The Color Harmony Wheel shows complementary, triadic and analogous relationships on the red–yellow–blue wheel painters use, or on the RGB wheel your software uses. The Color Palette Generator fills a plan out into a working palette with darks, lights and neutrals, and exports it to Procreate, Adobe apps or CSS.
Finally you check and produce. Painters can take any target color to the Paint Mixing Calculator for a recipe in simple parts from the paints they actually own. Designers can run text and background pairs through the Contrast Checker before a layout goes live, and anyone quoting a powder-coat or signage color can look it up in the RAL to HEX converter.
Which tool to open first
- “I need a palette for a new piece.” Start in the Palette Generator, lock one color you’re sure of, and press Space until the rest fall into place.
- “I want the colors of this photo.” Use the Image to Palette Extractor, then send the result to the generator to refine.
- “How do I mix this color?” Go straight to the Paint Mixing Calculator and tick only the tubes on your shelf.
- “Is this readable?” The Contrast Checker gives a WCAG pass or fail and suggests the nearest passing color.
Two habits worth building
Plan values before hues. A palette with a clear dark, a clear light and a few mid-tones in between almost always works; five colors of the same lightness rarely do, however well the hues match. Squint at any palette you make — if two swatches merge, they can’t do separate jobs.
Trust screens for planning, not for final color. Every monitor shows color a little differently, and paint, ink and fabric all shift again. Use these tools to get close quickly, then confirm with a physical test: a dried paint swatch, a printed proof or a real RAL chip.