Create color palettes from photographs on your Mac

Three ways to discover the colors in a photograph

Different photographs call for different approaches. Suisai offers three extraction methods, each designed to identify a different aspect of an image's color composition.

• Dominant — The colors that define the image

  Identifies the colors occupying the largest areas of a photograph. If most of an image consists of blue sky and water, those blues will naturally dominate the result. This is useful when you want a palette that represents the photograph's overall appearance.

• Vibrant — The colors that stand out

  Prioritizes colors with stronger chroma, using OKLCh to identify the more colorful shades in the image. Colors must also occupy a meaningful portion of the photograph to qualify, preventing a handful of isolated saturated pixels from dominating the result.

  This method is useful when you're looking for the distinctive accents that give a photograph its character.

• Spread — The broadest range of colors

  Selects colors that are perceptually distinct from one another, progressively favoring shades that differ from those already chosen. Rather than returning several similar blues from a predominantly blue photograph, Spread looks for greater variety across the image.

  This is useful when you want a more diverse palette from the same source.

Switch between methods at any time to compare their results. Each uses the same photograph but explores its colors in a different way.

Choose the colors that matter to you

Automatic extraction is a starting point. If Suisai misses a particular shade that caught your eye, simply click its position in the photograph to add your own selection.

Every extracted color is represented by a pin on the image. Move pins to adjust their selections, or expand and zoom into the photograph when you need to pick a more precise shade.

Suisai can automatically extract up to 16 colors, while the photograph supports up to 32 pins in total, including your own selections. Manual pins take priority: with eight automatically extracted colors, for example, you can add up to 24 of your own.

You can change the extraction method or the number of automatically selected colors without losing your manually placed pins. Suisai recalculates the automatic selections while keeping yours intact.

Once you're happy with the result, add the colors to your palette, where you can continue editing and arranging them.

Every extracted color comes from a real pixel

Suisai uses perceptual color grouping to identify representative shades, but the colors added to your palette are sampled from actual pixels in the photograph rather than calculated averages.

Every extracted color corresponds to a specific position in the image. This means your palette contains colors that genuinely appear in the photograph, even when the underlying analysis groups many similar pixels together.

Repeatable color extraction

Suisai's extraction process uses starting points derived from the photograph's own color histogram, rather than selecting them randomly.

That makes the extraction deterministic: processing the same image with the same settings produces consistent results, without colors changing simply because you ran the extraction again.

Color grouping takes place in a perceptual color space, allowing Suisai to evaluate differences based on how colors appear rather than relying solely on numerical differences between RGB values.

Your photographs stay on your Mac

Suisai processes photographs locally in memory. Your images aren't uploaded to a server, copied into an application database, or retained after you're finished with them.

When you save an extracted palette, Suisai saves the colors, not the original photograph. You remain free to use those colors without giving the application ongoing access to the source image.

No account, no analytics, and no macOS privacy permissions required.

The direct-download version makes limited network requests for update checks through a separate sandboxed helper. These requests don't include your photographs, extracted colors, or information about your work.

Read more about Suisai's privacy protections.

Make the colors your own

Once you've extracted the colors you want, they become part of a regular, editable Suisai palette.

Adjust individual swatches, give them custom names, rearrange their order, or combine them with colors you've collected elsewhere. You can also use them as starting points for color harmonies, ramps, and spectral pigment mixing.

Save your palette in ASE, GPL, or CLR format, install it into the macOS system color picker, or export it as a stylesheet, code, or image for use in other applications.

Your inspiration may come from a photograph, but what you create with those colors is entirely up to you.

Where a photograph's colors can go

An extracted palette is an ordinary Suisai palette. Build on it, explore the relationships inside it, or take it straight into the work.

• Build and edit palettes →Refine, name, and organize the colors you pulled out of the picture.
• Explore color harmonies →Use an extracted color as the seed for harmonies, ramps, and spectral mixes.
• Manage your palette Library →Save and find palettes alongside colors collected from other projects.
• Check color contrast →Check an extracted palette reads, graded against WCAG 2.2.
• Pick colors off your screen →Sample a color from anywhere on your Mac, not only from a photograph.

Turn the colors you love into palettes of your own.

Extract colors from photographs using three different methods, fine-tune selections with manual pins, and turn the results into editable palettes ready for your projects.

Everything is processed locally on your Mac. No image uploads, no accounts, and no analytics.

One purchase. No subscription.

If Suisai isn't right for you, a full refund is available within 30 days for direct purchases via Paddle. No reason needed.

macOS 14 or later · Universal · One-time purchase