Color Palette Extractor

Consistent color is how a channel becomes recognisable

Viewers recognise your videos in a crowded feed by color long before they read the title. The channels that grow fastest tend to reuse a tight, repeated palette across every thumbnail — not the same layout, the same colors. This tool gives you those colors from a thumbnail you already like, in a form you can reuse.

How the colors are chosen

Averaging pixels produces brown, every time. Instead this uses median cut quantization: the image's colors are treated as a box in three-dimensional color space, repeatedly split along the axis with the widest spread, and each final group averaged. That reproduces the hues a person would actually name when looking at the image, weighted slightly toward green because that is where the eye discriminates best.

Each swatch shows how much of the frame it covers, so you can tell a true dominant color from an accent that only appears in one corner.

The contrast badge

Every swatch is labelled with the text color that stays readable on it, and the WCAG contrast ratio it achieves. Use it before you commit to a color behind thumbnail text: a ratio of 4.5:1 or better means the text will still be legible at sidebar size, on a phone, in daylight.

Getting it into your workflow

Copy the whole palette as a hex list, as CSS custom properties for a site or overlay, or as JSON. Or click any single swatch to copy just that hex code.

Pairs naturally with the thumbnail downloader: pull the thumbnails of the top videos in your niche, run their palettes, and you can see exactly which colors are winning attention in your category.

Last updated August 9, 2026.