Overview
Adobe Color is a free online tool for creating, exploring, and saving color palettes. Users can build schemes with a color wheel, extract palettes and gradients from images, check accessibility contrast, and save themes to their Creative Cloud library.
Our take
A free colour palette tool from Adobe that extracts schemes from images and builds them from colour theory rules. It is genuinely good and costs nothing. The limitation is not the tool: a palette is the easy part of visual identity, and a generated set of five hex codes tells you nothing about which colour does what in a design.
Worth it if
Quickly extracting a usable palette from a reference image or exploring harmonies.
Look elsewhere if
Building a brand colour system — proportion, hierarchy and accessibility are the hard parts and are not covered.
✨ Features
Color Wheel
Create custom palettes using harmony rules on a color wheel.
Extract From Image
Generate palettes and gradients from any uploaded image.
Accessibility Tools
Check color contrast for accessible, compliant designs.
Explore & Save
Browse trending themes and save palettes to Creative Cloud.
⚖️ Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
💰 Pricing
Free
$0
- Create & explore color themes
- Color harmony rules & color wheel
- Extract palettes from images
- Accessibility contrast checker
- Save themes to Creative Cloud Libraries
Creative Cloud (Single App)
$22.99 /mo
- Sync palettes across Adobe apps
- Use themes in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
- Access to one full Adobe app
- Cloud storage for libraries
Creative Cloud All Apps
$54.99 /mo
- Full Adobe app suite integration
- Sync Color themes everywhere
- Cloud storage & fonts
- Adobe learning resources
Categories
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Will a generated palette pass accessibility contrast requirements?
Not reliably, and this is the most common problem with attractive palettes. Harmonious colours frequently sit at similar lightness, which produces poor text contrast. Check every text-and-background pair against WCAG ratios separately — a palette can be beautiful and unusable for body copy at the same time.
How many colours should a palette actually have?
Fewer than generators suggest. Most working systems use one dominant colour, one accent, and a neutral range, with everything else derived. Five equally weighted colours is a mood board, not a system — deciding proportion and role is what turns a palette into a design.