A color picker is a software tool used to select colors and, in some cases, to create color schemes.
The eyedropper is a tool available in most color pickers and graphics software that allows a user to read a color at a specific point in an image, or position on a display. This enables the color to be transferred to other applications particularly quickly.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 10 high quality color pickers. All of the software is published under an open source license. The vast majority of tools included sport a modern graphical user interface.
We only include dedicated color picker software in this roundup. Some other graphics programs also include color picker functionality.
We make the following recommendations captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style chart.
Let’s explore the color pickers at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Color Pickers | |
|---|---|
| pastel | Generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors |
| Gpick | Advanced color picker and palette editor |
| KColorChooser | Color picker designed for KDE but runs on any desktop environment |
| Eyedropper | Pick and format colors; this tool is geared towards advanced users |
| Pick | Python-based color picker |
| xcolor | Lightweight color picker written in Rust |
| epick | Color picker for creating harmonic color palettes |
| Gcolor3 | Color selection dialog written in GTK+ 3 |
| Colorpicker | Minimal but complete colorpicker Electron-based desktop app |
| Xgrabcolor | Basic color picker |
| cpick | Extensive color picker for the terminal |
| pik | Terminal-based color picker |
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We have retained comments for historic purposes.
For 95% of jobs, KDE’s Colour Picker is the most convenient of tools – can display a history end easily edit colours.
Thanks for your feedback.
We’re aware of KDE’s Colour Picker widget. It’s a basic yet functional picker. We didn’t include that here because this roundup focuses on standalone apps, not DE-specific widgets. We featured the widget in our KDE Plasma Widgets roundup.
Or maybe you mean KColorChooser, which is a standalone app and runs under any DE. That one should have been included. We’ll update this roundup.
Roundup updated.
Pastel is probably very good at doing what it does — “generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors.¨ However it is not a color picker (use the mouse to select a pixel on screen and show its color code) so I do not know why it is included in this list of colorpicker utilities,.
One of the subcommands of pastel is “pick” which interactively picks a color from the screen.
Sure the program does a lot more than other pickers.