color-extract

A toolkit to extract dominant colors from images using various K-Means clustering approaches.

Example

Features

Extraction Methods

• Original K-Means: Standard K-Means clustering approach
• Aggressive Weighting: K-Means with aggressive saturation weighting to emphasize vibrant colors
• Vibrant Separate: Separate clustering for vibrant minority colors and base colors
• LAB Enhanced: LAB color space with saturation-weighted sampling for perceptually uniform clustering
• Multi-stage: Multi-stage extraction: vibrant colors first, then distinct base colors

Sorting

• Spatial sorting (left-to-right or top-to-bottom)
• Frequency-based sorting

Installation

With pip:

pip install color-extract

Or with uv:

uv add color-extract

Command Line Usage

# Basic extraction with default settings
color-extract image.jpg

# Extract 8 colors using the vibrant method
color-extract image.jpg -c 8 -m vibrant

# Compare all methods and define output folder
color-extract image.jpg -m all -o ./myfolder

CLI Options

usage: color-extract [options] image

Arguments:
  image                Path to the input image

Options:
  -h, --help           Show help message
  --colors, -c         Number of colors to extract (default: 6)
  --method, -m         Extraction method (default: lab)
  --output, -o         Output file path (default: ./output)
  --sort, -s           Sorting method: (default: frequency)
  --weights, -w        Show color weights (default: False)
  --no-plot            Disable plot generation
  --max-dimension      Max dimension for downscaling (default: 64)
  --dpi                DPI for output plots (default: 150)

Output Examples

Console

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ LAB Enhanced                        │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
┌───────┬──────────┬──────────────────┐
│  ■■■  │ #277595  │ (39, 117, 149)   │
│  ■■■  │ #68b2c6  │ (104, 178, 198)  │
│  ■■■  │ #6c6963  │ (108, 105, 99)   │
│  ■■■  │ #394d4d  │ (57, 77, 77)     │
│  ■■■  │ #782722  │ (120, 39, 34)    │
│  ■■■  │ #102937  │ (16, 41, 55)     │
└───────┴──────────┴──────────────────┘
Result saved to output/colors_image_lab_6.png

Plotted Images

Aggressive Weighting	LAB Enhanced

Multi-stage	K-Means

Python API Usage

import color_extract
import numpy as np
from PIL import Image

# Simple extraction from file
colors = color_extract.extract_colors('image.jpg', method='lab', n_colors=5)
for color in colors:
    print(color_extract.rgb_to_hex(color))

# Use with numpy array
img = Image.open('image.jpg')
img_array = np.array(img)
colors = color_extract.extract_colors(img_array, method='aggressive')

# Advanced usage with visualization
from color_extract import plot_single_result, load_and_prepare_image

img, img_array = load_and_prepare_image('image.jpg')
colors = color_extract.extract_colors_lab_enhanced(img_array, n_colors=6)
sorted_colors = color_extract.sort_colors_by_spatial_position(img_array, colors)

# Generate visualization
plot_single_result(img, img_array, sorted_colors, 'LAB Enhanced', 'output.png')

API Reference

Main Functions

Main convenience function for color extraction.

colors = extract_colors(image, method='lab', n_colors=6, sort_by='frequency', weights=False)

# Parameters:
# - image: File path (str) or numpy array (H, W, 3)
# - method: Extraction method name ('kmeans', 'aggressive', 'vibrant', 'lab', 'multstage')
# - n_colors: Number of colors to extract
# - sort_by: Sorting method ('x-axis', 'y-axis', 'frequency')
# - weights: If True, also return each color's weight (its share of the image)

# Returns:
# - List of RGB tuples (default)
# - If weights=True: list of dicts in the same order, with weights summing to ~1.0:
#   [{'rgb': (r, g, b), 'hex': '#rrggbb', 'lab': (L, a, b), 'weight': <float 0-1>}, ...]

# Get colors with their weights
result = extract_colors('image.jpg', weights=True)
for item in result:
    print(item['hex'], item['rgb'], item['lab'], item['weight'])

Individual Extraction Methods

Each method can be used directly for more control:

# Original K-Means
colors = extract_colors_kmeans_original(img_array, n_colors=6)

# LAB color space
colors = extract_colors_lab_enhanced(img_array, n_colors=6, saturation_boost=5.0)

# Aggressive saturation weighting
colors = extract_colors_weighted_aggressive(img_array, n_colors=6, saturation_boost=10.0)

# Separate vibrant colors
colors = extract_colors_vibrant_separate(img_array, n_colors=6, n_vibrant=3)

# Multi-stage extraction
colors = extract_colors_multistage(img_array, n_colors=6)

Further Reading

• New Approach to Dominant and Prominent Color Extraction in Images with a Wide Range of Hues
• Dominant Colors with (not just) K-Means