Color Extraction Effect

A little slideshow with a color palette creation effect using CSS Filters and Vibrant.js.

Today we’d like to share a fun little color extraction experiment with you. The idea is to create a color palette from an image with a subtle effect on the image itself and some fanciness on the palette. We are using Vibrant.js by Jari Zwarts to extract the colors from the images, and CSS Filters to transition the image to a black and white version. We also implemented a simple slider with a special “curtain” effect.

Attention: This experiment uses some CSS properties that might not work in older browsers (CSS Animations, CSS Filters).

ColorExtraction_01

For IE 10+, where we don’t have support for CSS Filters (only in Edge behind a flag), we added a simple fallback where we place a SVG image on top of the colored one and apply a SVG filter effect.

ColorExtraction_02

Tiny break: 📬 Want to stay up to date with frontend and trends in web design? Subscribe and get our Collective newsletter twice a tweek.

For the color palette items, we add a little wave as background image and animate it, to simulate the item getting “filled” with the color that we extract using Vibrant.js. The Hex color code is placed beneath the extracted color.

ColorExtraction_03

We hope you enjoy this little experiment and find it inspiring!

Manoela Ilic

Manoela is the main tinkerer at Codrops. With a background in coding and passion for all things design, she creates web experiments and keeps frontend professionals informed about the latest trends.

Stay in the loop: Get your dose of frontend twice a week

Fresh news, inspo, code demos, and UI animations—zero fluff, all quality. Make your Mondays and Thursdays creative!

Feedback 22

Comments are closed.
  1. Works really well. A great way to get theme colours from existing images.

  2. That is simply amazing. Not sure where I can use this but I will definitely figure out a way to incorporate it into my work. Thanks!

  3. Hi, it is such an amazing plugin, I’d like to know if it possible to display the associate code of hexadecimal in CMJN ?
    Thnak you for your anwser

    emilie

  4. Not only this one, but whole of all plugins given here are excellent. can i use them in my web sites ?