Image color picking — Troubleshooting

Worked example

Usual causes of a wrong color are a transparent pixel, an edge or gradient, a compressed source, or a different app comparison.

When the result is exactly rgb(0, 0, 0) on a spot that is clearly not black, you probably clicked a fully transparent area of a PNG or SVG. Click inside the visible shape instead. When every click gives a slightly different number in what looks like one flat colour, the source is a JPG with compression noise or a soft gradient, so sample several points and keep the middle value.

A frequent support case: a marketer says the HEX from the tool does not match the colour in the design file. Compare the same pixel in both places before blaming either tool, since a different colour profile, a screenshot, or a scaled copy of the image can shift values. Re-open the original file and click the same shape again.

If you see a message that the image cannot be sampled, try re-saving it as PNG; if the page says the image could not be read, check that the file is non-empty and one of PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, SVG, AVIF or BMP. Dropping several files at once is refused, so drop one. If copying fails because the browser blocked the clipboard, select the shown value and copy it by hand.

Large photos may look different from the colour you remember because the canvas is displayed scaled down. The tool maps your click back to the real pixel position, so you do not need to zoom in, but you should avoid clicking on tiny details.

Pixel selected in an image

HEX and RGB values

A transparent pixel reads as black in a canvas, so a black result on a see-through area is a limit of the image, not a bug in the picker.