Private image-to-palette tool
Turn a cartoon, illustration, screenshot, or reference image into a compact working palette. Toon Tone finds distinct dominant colors, reports HEX, RGB, and HSB, lets you lock the swatches that matter, and adds a short memory challenge after extraction.
Updated July 21, 2026
cartoon color palette generator
The generator reads a local image in your browser, groups nearby pixel colors, ranks the groups by visible coverage, and chooses five or eight swatches that remain meaningfully different from one another. Each result includes copyable HEX, RGB, and HSB values. You can lock a useful color before regenerating the remaining positions, download a labeled PNG, copy CSS variables, or choose one swatch for a five-second color-memory test. The process is a practical visual summary, not an official palette claim about any character, studio, or brand.
Local dominant-color extraction
Load a cartoon, illustration, screenshot, or photo. The browser proposes five or eight distinct colors, then lets you lock the useful swatches and regenerate the rest.
Processed locally — your image is not uploaded
Generated palette
Prominence estimates sampled area. Use the source image—not percentage alone—to decide which colors matter.
Load an image to generate a palette.
Five-second recall
Choose Practice on a palette card. Study the color for five seconds, rebuild it with HSB controls, and reveal a Toon Tone practice score.
Choose Practice on any generated swatch to begin.
Loading the local sample palette.
Processed locally — your image is not uploaded
Image decoding, downsampling, color grouping, palette generation, and PNG export all run with browser APIs on your device. This page has no image-upload endpoint, account library, or cloud-save step. Refreshing or closing the tab clears the working image and extracted colors. The privacy boundary applies to this tool's code path; normal device, browser-extension, and downloaded-file security still remain your responsibility.
A good result starts with a clear source and ends with deliberate selection. The workflow below keeps extraction fast while leaving the final editorial choice with you.
Drop, browse, or paste an image with readable color regions. Flat artwork works especially well, but shaded illustrations and screenshots are also supported. The sample image makes the complete workflow available immediately.
Choose five colors for a compact identity palette or eight for more supporting shades. Lock any swatch you want to keep, then regenerate so only the unlocked positions are reconsidered.
Copy one color, copy the full list, create CSS variables, or download a labeled PNG. Select Practice on any swatch to study it briefly, hide it, rebuild the HSB values, and compare the score.
The generator uses a deterministic visual-summary workflow rather than generative AI. It reduces processing size, groups nearby pixel values, and then protects perceptual separation between selected swatches.
| Stage | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Local sampling | The browser reads a scaled canvas instead of sending the original file away. | Large images remain responsive and private while preserving the broad color distribution. |
| Color grouping | Nearby RGB pixels enter small buckets and are averaged into candidate colors. | Texture and tiny compression shifts do not fill the palette with nearly identical codes. |
| Distinct selection | Common candidates are ranked, then checked with perceptual color distance. | The final five or eight swatches cover meaningful differences instead of raw frequency alone. |
A generated palette is most useful when the source, target area, and next task are clear. These three workflows use the same swatches in different ways.
Summarize a frame, compare warm and cool roles, and inspect how a character, prop, and background share visual weight. Treat the result as a study aid rather than an official production color key.
Copy HEX values or CSS variables for a draft interface, presentation, or mood board. Review contrast and approved brand sources before treating an extracted swatch as a production token.
Pick one generated color, study it for five seconds, then rebuild hue, saturation, and brightness without the reference. The reveal turns a passive palette into a repeatable visual exercise.
Cartoon art often looks simple because viewers recognize broad shapes and flat fills quickly, yet a useful palette still has to separate the parts doing different jobs. A large pale background may occupy most of the pixels without defining the subject. Black outlines may be frequent but less useful than a smaller costume accent. Shadows, highlights, antialiased edges, texture, captions, and compression can produce dozens of codes around one color that the eye reads as a single region. A raw frequency list therefore tends to overrepresent the background and repeat near-duplicates. Toon Tone groups nearby values first and then asks whether each proposed swatch is perceptually different from colors already selected. The result remains compact enough to scan while preserving more than one visual role.
Five colors work well when you want a fast identity summary: one dominant field, one subject color, one secondary color, one accent, and one light or dark support. Eight colors make room for a second accent, a shadow family, or another background role. Neither size is automatically correct. A very flat icon may need fewer colors, while a shaded animation frame may still lose information at eight. Use the generated set as a starting point, inspect it beside the source, and lock only the swatches that answer your actual question. The lock control is intentionally editorial: the algorithm proposes candidates, but you decide which colors deserve a permanent place in the working palette.
No. The selected or pasted image is decoded, sampled, and summarized inside the current browser tab. This page has no image-upload endpoint, account library, or cloud-save step. A downloaded PNG or copied value remains on your device or clipboard until you remove it.
The palette generator automatically summarizes several dominant, distinct colors across the whole image. The image color picker reports the exact pixel you select. Use the generator for a fast overview and the picker when a particular costume, outline, highlight, or background coordinate matters.
Small accents contribute fewer sampled pixels than large backgrounds or body regions. Try eight colors, lock the useful swatches, and regenerate. If the accent remains absent, use the image color picker to sample that exact area rather than treating automatic prominence as importance.
No. They are browser-derived samples from the particular file you loaded. Lighting, compression, shading, transparency, source quality, and display conversion can change the pixels. Use authorized brand or studio specifications when official accuracy is required.
Yes. Copy CSS creates numbered custom properties for the current swatches. Review naming, contrast, color-space requirements, and approved design tokens before using the draft values in production.