How to pick a color from an image
Move the crosshair over the picture and the swatch below it shows the color under the cursor as you go. Click to pick: a marker drops on that spot and the large swatch on the right updates with its HEX, RGB and HSL values, each with its own Copy button. Click again anywhere to pick another color.
Picking reads pixels from the copy of the image already loaded in the page, so it responds instantly. The palette beside it is extracted on the server, so the image is uploaded once when you open it. Click any palette swatch to see its codes in the same way.
HEX, RGB or HSL: which to use
HEX, such as #2563EB, is the compact form most design apps and CSS files use. RGB, written rgb(37, 99, 235), gives the red, green and blue channels from 0 to 255, handy in code and when you need to tweak a single channel. HSL, written hsl(221, 83%, 53%), describes hue in degrees, then saturation and lightness as percentages, which makes it easy to create lighter or darker versions of the same color by changing one number.
Getting an accurate pick
Photos are rarely made of flat color. Noise, shading and JPEG compression mean neighboring pixels can differ noticeably, so a single click on skin, sky or fabric may land on a slightly lighter or darker pixel than the area looks overall. Pick from the middle of an even area, or use the palette swatch for that region, which represents a group of similar pixels.
For speed, very large images are sampled from a copy scaled to at most 1,200 pixels on the longest side. That doesn't matter for areas of color, but a one-pixel line in a huge image may blend slightly with its surroundings.