Color Palette Extractor

Why Extract Palettes for AI Video?

AI video and image work benefits from consistent brand color. Extract a palette from a reference image (mood board, brand asset, hero shot) and feed those colors into your brand kit. Imagen and Veo can be prompted with specific color language for more consistent output.

Privacy

The extractor runs entirely in your browser. Your image is never uploaded to a server.

How AI models interpret color in a prompt

Imagen, Veo, and Gemini all respect explicit hex codes more reliably than they respect named colors. A prompt that says "navy wool coat" gets you a navy coat that drifts between #1a2540 and #2c3e62 across generations. A prompt that says "wool coat in #1c2541" pins the color to within a few percent across every generation. For brand work where the color must match the spec sheet, always feed the hex codes directly.

When you have a five-to-eight color palette extracted from a brand reference, the recommended prompt syntax is: "primary color #7c3aed across the wardrobe and the dominant prop, secondary color #ec4899 for accent details, neutrals from #f8fafc to #1e293b for the environment." The model treats this as a binding instruction rather than a vague description.

Three uses for an extracted palette

• Brand kit lockdown. Drop a brand-book hero image and extract the authoritative five-color set. Save those hex codes in Playcut's brand kit so every future generation auto-prompts with them — no per-generation re-entry.
• Moodboard translation. Drop the moodboard images a client sent over and extract the colors that visually define the reference. Paste them into your Veo or Imagen prompt as the style register. This is the fastest way to bridge "make it look like this Pinterest board" to "here is a prompt the model can execute."
• Competitor analysis. Drop a competitor's hero ad creative and extract its palette. You'll find that most performance creative in a vertical converges on the same 3-5 colors. Knowing the convergence lets you either match it (for category credibility) or deliberately break it (for category disruption).
• Brand asset production. Once the palette is locked, carry it into the rest of your brand surface: the free favicon generator builds the browser icon set from a brand-colored source image, and the free image watermark tool stamps a logo or wordmark in your palette onto every export before it ships.

Color Palette Extractor FAQ

How many colors does the extractor pull?

The tool returns the five dominant colors by default and lets you expand to eight if your reference image has more visual variety. Five is typically the right number for a brand kit; eight is the right number for a complex moodboard with multiple distinct objects or settings.

Why does the extractor use k-means clustering?

K-means clustering groups pixels by visual similarity in the LAB color space, which matches how human eyes perceive color difference more accurately than RGB clustering. The result is a palette that captures the actual visual register of the image rather than a noisy sample of arbitrary pixels.

Can I tune the extraction for skin tones?

The default extraction treats every color equally. If you're working with portrait references and want the palette to focus on wardrobe and environment rather than skin, we recommend cropping the reference image to exclude faces before dropping it into the tool. A skin-tone-aware extraction mode is on the roadmap.

Do you support importing a Playcut brand kit directly?

Yes, from inside the Playcut studio. The brand-kit color extractor is available on every plan; the standalone tool on this page is the no-signup version of the same functionality.

Want the full studio?

Playcut's brand kits hold colors, typography, logos, and voice — and they travel with every generation. Start your 7-day trial.