About Color Next

What it is

Color Next is a set of 10 free color tools: Color Palette Generator, Color Palette from Image, Color Picker, Color Contrast Checker, CSS Gradient Generator, Color Shades Generator, Color Harmonies, Color Converter, HEX to RGB Converter and RGB to HEX Converter. Each has its own page that explains how the result is calculated, shows a worked example and answers the questions people ask, including what the tool cannot do.

How the colors are calculated

Conversions between HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV and CMYK are made with the standard formulas, and a color that is a whole number of red, green and blue converts to another model and back without any change. The contrast ratio is the WCAG 2 formula, compared with the exact value and not the rounded one that is displayed. The color-blindness preview applies the published model of Machado, Oliveira and Fernandes (2009) to linear light, and the nearest-name and merge steps measure distance in OKLab, a color space designed so that equal distances look about equally different.

Palettes follow the color wheel: the hues of a harmony are turned by fixed angles from an anchor color, and saturation and lightness vary a little so that a palette does not look mechanical. Dominant colors of a picture are found by median cut. These rules are covered by automated tests that check each result against values published elsewhere or against the rule itself.

What is not promised

Colors look different on different screens, in different light and in print. The tools work with the numbers that define a color in the sRGB space of the web. Check the colors that matter on the devices and materials where they will be used, and use a print profile for print. The color-blindness preview is a model, not a diagnosis, and passing a contrast check is the minimum, not a guarantee that text is comfortable to read.

How your pictures and palettes are handled

A picture you choose is opened by your browser and analyzed in the page. It is never uploaded. There are no accounts and no database. If you press Save palette, the colors are kept in your browser's local storage, and the privacy policy explains how to delete them. A shared palette link carries its colors after the # sign, a part that browsers do not send to a server.

How it is funded

Color Next is free to use and may be supported by advertising. Advertisements are labelled and kept out of the editors: they are never placed in or beside a palette, the picker, the contrast checker or a preview, and never where they could be mistaken for a control. The privacy policy describes what advertising partners may collect when ads are shown.