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The 10 Best Color Picker and Color Management Apps

For designers and graphic artists of all kinds, color is a major component of the job. How do you manage those colors? How do you determine the correct one? How do you focus on the color you really want?

Turns out, there are free and open-source apps available to handle each of these tasks on Linux. And the options available are more varied than you might think.

1. color picker

When it comes to Color Picker for GNOME, the name of the app says it all. Or so it may seem.

Do you want to select a color from another window or an image on your screen? you can do that. Alternatively, you can select your own color from the color wheel and copy and paste the corresponding RGB numbers or hexadecimal values into a separate app.

There may come a point in your project when you need to use the same color more than once. Color Picker lets you save colors to refer back to later.

It seems like a pretty standard and feature-complete GNOME app, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for everyone. Other apps are quicker to port to GTK4 and libadwaita. If you want a more modern look, you might want to check out the next option.

2. Eyedropper

Ok, all the features of Color Picker? He also has an eyedropper. But the difference between the two apps is not limited to the use of new code. Eyedropper comes in handy to manage colors from a different angle.

Instead of a color wheel, the eyedropper gives you a palette of colors in different shades in a grid. And instead of manually saving the colors, the app does so automatically, rendering them right in front.

The eyedropper prioritizes helping you copy and paste colors in different values. You have hexadecimal, RGB, HSL, HSV and CMYK. If you don’t know what these letters mean, that’s okay, you don’t need to bother with those fields. But if you know, they are there.

3. pick up

Do you listen to the Bad Voltage podcast? Co-host Stuart Langridge is a developer, and the pic is one of his creations. This fun fact aside, why would you want to choose the Pik over other options?

Pick doesn’t just remember your colors, it helps you remember where those colors are from. Pair each color with a screenshot of the area of the screen you selected.

There is a big caveat. Pick doesn’t yet work with Wayland, the default display server on Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other distros. You can always go back to X.org if you really want to use Pic. And if you’re on a distro like Early OS that hasn’t yet switched to Wayland, the pick is likely to work fine.

4. Color palette

Palette, also known as Color Palette, is a tool for designers creating GNOME app icons or other GNOME-related art. The tool provides the GNOME color palette as prescribed in GNOME’s design guidelines.

This gives this app a limited use case, but if you contribute to the GNOME ecosystem or just love GNOME’s color options, here’s a tool for you.

5. Swatch

Let’s say you like the look of pallets, but you need something less niche. Swatches lets you create your own color palette. The app can do more than one save at a time, so you can jump between multiple projects.

You can give each palette a descriptive title to help you use each set of colors. You can switch between different view types and select colors manually or choose from an area of your screen.

If you use GIMP, Swatches is a good companion. You can import and export palettes between the two apps.

6. GNOME Color Manager

Many of us don’t give much thought to the technology behind color representation. How it looks on our screens is how it should look. Correct?

Turns out, color management can be rather complicated. Many designers or gamers buy monitors based on how accurately they display colors. If you work with printed materials, this is information you need to know. Capturing an image, displaying it on a screen, and then printing it using the same colors throughout the process can take proactive effort.

GNOME Color Manager provides you with technical information about the color profiles on your system. This helps you calibrate your monitor, printer and camera to get the correct colors.

7. k-color-chooser

If you think this list is GNOME-heavy, that’s okay. this is done. So here’s one for the KDE Plasma fans.

Like many KDE apps, K-ColorChooser is one of a kind tool that suits everyone. You can select colors from different parts of the screen, select them manually, and copy different values. You can save the previously selected colors. You can create your own color palette. Some are included, such as those used in KDE’s Oxygen theme.

No, there aren’t as many KDE-oriented alternatives to choose from, but there’s a strong chance that this app will do what you need. And if not, GNOME apps run fine on the Plasma desktop.

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