Create Color Palettes from Your Smartphone Pics with These 4 Free Apps

Luis Barragán House / Luis Barragán. Imagem © Flickr of LrBln

"Anyone can be a photographer nowadays, all you need is a smartphone." Although this is a well-known cliche, that doesn't mean it's entirely untrue. Recently, with the advancement of smartphone technology, aided by social networks, the growth of photographic capabilities on these devices has increased at an exponential speed. 

However, there are also lesser known mobile applications that explore graphic design. Some of the most interesting apps are those that generate color palettes from images on your cell phone's camera roll. Below are four free apps to download that explore color palettes.  

Grace Farms / SANAA. Image © Dean Kaufman

PANTONE Studio

Developed by Pantone, in this application, you can generate color palettes from images stored in your cell phone. It was thought of as an application to share material among people, groups, clients, and professionals involved in creative industries. The free version allows you to create and share palettes, with the possibility of buying additional tools and features, including full access to the company's official palettes and inspiration panels with color references.

The application is available for download on the App Store and is only compatible with the IOS operating system. PANTONE Studio can be displayed in 10 different languages.

La Muralla Roja / Ricardo Bofill. Image © Gregori Civerva

Palette Cam

The main feature of this app is the ability to identify the colors present within our cell phone's camera library. It also can create palette patterns in photos that we have already liked or saved from the app.

Unlike the PANTONE app, Palette Cam identifies specific colors, including the HEX and RGB values. It allows you to save these colors and then set up palettes for each photo. You can also create thematic albums with images that inspire users' creations.

Color Viewfinder

This app, similar to the previous, can create color palettes from both photos stored in your camera roll or taken at the moment. However, Color Viewfinder can generate color sets from the photographs, giving the user a range of tones on the images, thus easing the identification of colors.

With this free tool, you can also share your color palettes on your social networks. It is available for IOS and Android.

Hidden Village / MVRDV. Image courtesy of MVRDV

Real Colors

Real Colors works as a social network where users share the color palettes generated from their photos. Users can like and comment on other people's feeds without signing up. However, to create your own palettes, you need to register by email or Facebook.

Palettes are created from photos taken at the moment or stored in one's library. The free version displays five colors present in the image and their respective CMYK codes, but it is possible to unlock application functions that generate other color combinations from criteria such as monochrome, complementary colors, etc.

After the palette is created, you can share your results on your feed, as well as other social networks such as Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram; but, the user can only save the results to their personal library. This palette generator is available for IOS  and Android users in English, French, and Portuguese.