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Pixel Art Colour Picker

An HSV and hex colour picker with RGB and HSL inputs that all stay in sync, a recent-colours row, and the classic pixel art palettes one click away: PICO-8, Game Boy, Sweetie 16, Endesga 32, NES.

1 · PICK A COLOUR

Recent
Drag on the square for saturation and value, on the strip for hue. Every field is two-way: type a hex, RGB or HSL value and the picker follows.
Want sprites drawn in a palette like these? SpriteLab has palette lock built in, so every generation snaps to the colours you choose.
Rendering…
RENDERINGYour colour appears here.

Curated palettes

Click any swatch to load it into the picker and read its hex, RGB and HSL values. These are fixed palettes from real hardware and from the pixel art community, the ones you will see named in tutorials and jam rules.

How it works

Pick or type a colour

Drag on the saturation-value square and the hue strip, or type a hex code, RGB or HSL values. Every input updates the others.

Read the ramp

The preview shows the colour as a block beside its complement and a five-step shading ramp. Download it as a PNG and eyedrop from it in your editor.

Grab from a palette

Click a swatch in the curated palettes below to load it. Recent colours stay in the row above so you can hop between a few candidates.

Choosing colours for pixel art

Pixel art lives or dies on a small, deliberate palette. A 16-colour sprite with a well-built ramp reads better than a 256-colour one with muddy in-betweens. The picker is built around that: hue, saturation and value on separate controls, and a ramp preview so you can see a colour as a family rather than a single value.

A few habits that help. Keep your darkest shade off pure black and your lightest off pure white, so outlines and highlights still sit inside the palette. Shift the hue a little as you go darker (usually toward blue or purple) and lighter (toward yellow), rather than only changing brightness. Pick one accent with high saturation and keep the rest calmer. And when in doubt, start from a proven palette like PICO-8 or Endesga 32 and only add what you cannot find in it.

FAQ

Is the colour picker free?

Yes. It runs in your browser, needs no account and stores nothing beyond a short list of recent colours for the current tab.

Why HSV rather than a plain RGB picker?

Pixel artists build ramps by moving saturation and value while nudging hue, and HSV puts those three on separate controls. RGB sliders make it hard to keep a colour family together.

What are the palettes?

Fixed palettes from real hardware and from the pixel art community: Game Boy, 1-bit, CGA, PICO-8, Sweetie 16, Endesga 8, Endesga 32 and a 54-colour NES set. Click any swatch to load it into the picker and read its values.

What is the ramp under the swatch?

Five steps from a darker to a lighter version of the current colour, the kind of ramp you would use for shading one material. The complementary colour beside it is the hue opposite on the wheel.

Can I download the colour?

Yes. The preview is a PNG with the colour, its complement and the five-step ramp as solid blocks, so you can drop it into your editor and eyedrop from it. COPY HEX copies the code to the clipboard.

More free tools

In the app

Open SpriteLab to keep building with your sprites.