About Online Color Tools

What this site is

Online Color Tools is an independent project for designers and developers who need a color value right now: the HEX code of a pixel on screen, the palette hidden in a logo, the contrast ratio between two brand colors. Each tool does one job, loads fast, and works offline once the page has loaded.

• Screen color picker — sample any pixel on your screen and export it in seven formats.
• Image color picker — load a photo or screenshot and read the color under your cursor.
• Palette generator — build harmonious palettes from a base color and export them as PNG or SVG.
• Color converter — move between HEX, RGB, RGBA, HSL, HSLA, HSV and CMYK.
• Contrast checker — test a foreground/background pair against WCAG thresholds.

How it works

Every page on this site is a static file. There is no application server and no database behind the tools: the decoding, sampling, conversion and contrast math all happen in JavaScript on your own machine. When you open an image, it is read by the browser's File API and painted onto a canvas element — the file never leaves your device, and we have no way to see it.

Where a task needs a capability the browser has to grant, we use the standard API rather than a workaround: the EyeDropper API for screen sampling and the Clipboard API for copy buttons. That is why the screen picker only appears in Chromium-based browsers: it is a limit of the API, not of our tool.

Why it is free

Hosting a static site costs almost nothing, and there is no infrastructure to pay for once the pages exist. So there is no paywall, no watermark on exported palettes, no "upgrade to remove ads", and no email harvesting wall. The only third-party code on the pages is anonymised traffic measurement, which is described in detail in our privacy policy.

Who maintains it

Online Color Tools is maintained by an independent developer rather than a company. If something is wrong — a color value that looks off, a format that fails to copy on your browser, a guide that no longer matches the tool — the contact page is the way to tell us, and reports like that are what the site improves on.