To copy a color from a picture in Procreate, import the photo onto your canvas (Actions > Add > Insert a photo), then touch and hold the color you want to open the eyedropper. Drag to preview shades and lift your finger or Apple Pencil to set the sampled color as your active color. If you'd rather not put the photo on your canvas, open it in Canvas > Reference and touch and hold on the reference image instead.

Below are the four reliable ways to sample color from an image, how to get precise values, and how to carry those colors into an After Effects or Nuke pipeline.

Method 1: Sample from a photo on your canvas

This is the most direct route and the one most tutorials cover.

1. Open or create a canvas.
2. Tap the Actions icon (wrench), choose Add, then Insert a photo. Pick the image from your library.
3. Position and scale the image, then tap the Transform tool again to confirm. The photo lands on its own layer.
4. Touch and hold on the color you want. The eyedropper loupe appears.
5. Drag to preview other pixels. The loupe shows the new color on top and your previous color below, which makes quick side-by-side comparisons easy.
6. Lift to confirm. The sampled color is now your active color, ready to paint with.

The default activation is touch and hold. You can change it under Actions > Prefs > Gesture controls > Eyedropper, where you can map it to a different gesture or a Quick Menu action. If you sample often, assigning it to a gesture or Quick Menu shortcut saves a lot of taps.

Sampling from a flattened view

The eyedropper reads what you see on the canvas, so anything visible above your photo, such as a sketch, a tint layer, or an adjustment layer, can contaminate the result. Hide those layers before sampling if you need the photo's true color.

Method 2: Sample from the Reference companion

If you want to keep the photo out of your artwork entirely, use Reference.

1. Open Actions > Canvas and turn on Reference.
2. Tap Image in the Reference window and import a photo (or choose Canvas to reference your own artwork).
3. Touch and hold on the reference image. The eyedropper activates, and the sampled color becomes your active color.

Two quirks are worth knowing. First, the hold duration in the Reference window isn't adjustable, so it can feel slightly slower than on the canvas. Second, it works even if your canvas eyedropper is set to a different gesture. If it seems unresponsive, give it a beat longer than you expect before assuming it's broken.

This method is the cleanest for color-matching work, since your layer stack never contains the reference and nothing ends up in your export.

Method 3: Generate a palette from a photo

When you need a whole scheme rather than one color, you can have Procreate build the palette.

1. Open the Color panel and go to the Palettes tab.
2. Create a new palette and choose the option to build it from a photo.
3. Select your image. Procreate generates a palette of swatches drawn from the image.

Once a palette is active, its swatches sit at the bottom of every Color panel mode.

Auto-generated palettes lean toward dominant colors. They can miss a small accent, such as a rim light or a logo color, that matters for your design. Pick those manually with the eyedropper and add them to the palette.

Method 4: Copy a color from a web page or another app

Procreate can't sample outside its own canvas, so the practical workaround is a screenshot.

1. Take a screenshot of the page, app, or video frame.
2. Insert it into Procreate (Method 1) or load it into the Reference companion (Method 2).
3. Sample as usual.

Remember that a screenshot is a rendering of the page on your display, so it reflects your device's screen settings and any compression applied to the image. For brand colors, check the source's published hex values if they exist and treat the screenshot as a fallback.

Getting precise values, not just a nice-looking color

Picking a color by eye and capturing a color you can reproduce elsewhere are different tasks. If the color has to leave Procreate, a few habits help.

Read the hex or RGB values

Open the Color panel and switch to the Value tab. It offers precision sliders along with numerical and hexadecimal values for the active color. After sampling, check the hex there and note it.

Avoid sampling noise

Photos contain grain, compression artifacts, and texture. A single-pixel sample can land on an outlier and give you a color that isn't representative of the area. To average it:

• Duplicate the photo layer and apply a strong Gaussian blur (Adjustments > Gaussian Blur) or Pixelate.
• Sample from the blurred copy.
• Delete the copy when you're done.

This gives you the average tone of a region instead of the luck of the pixel.

Check your color profile

Procreate canvases have a color profile, and the values you read are relative to it. If you're matching colors to an After Effects comp, make sure the canvas profile and your AE project's working color space are understood on both sides. An sRGB hex typed into a project with a different working space, or viewed on a wide-gamut display, will not look identical. Verify visually on a calibrated reference when accuracy matters.

Troubleshooting: when the eyedropper won't pick the color

• Nothing happens on touch and hold. Check Gesture controls to confirm the eyedropper is enabled and hasn't been remapped. In the Reference window, hold a little longer.
• The color is off from the photo. A layer above the photo is probably tinting the result. Hide overlays, adjustment layers, and any layers with blend modes, then sample again.
• The photo isn't where you expect. Confirm you're sampling the visible canvas, and that the image layer is visible and at full opacity.
• You're on a locked or hidden layer. Make sure the layer containing your photo is visible.
• The color looks different after you paint with it. Check your brush's opacity, blend mode, and Color Dynamics. The sampled color may be fine while the stroke alters it.

Bringing sampled colors into an After Effects pipeline

Procreate is often a quick color-study tool for motion designers: you pull a palette from a client photo or mood board, then build styleframes or designs elsewhere. A simple handoff keeps things consistent:

1. Sample your colors and record the hex values from the Value tab.
2. Build a palette swatch strip in Procreate with your final selections, labeled in the layer names or a notes layer.
3. Export a reference PNG of the swatch strip and keep it with the project files.
4. In After Effects, enter hex values into a Solid, Fill effect, or shape color, or use the eyedropper on the imported swatch PNG to verify them. Keep the project's color management settings in mind.

The same values carry into Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D, Blender, or Nuke. The eyedropper-on-reference habit translates well to those tools too, since you can always sample from the exported swatch image.

Where Styleframe fits when the palette is only the start

A palette pulled from a photo gets you the colors, but motion work needs those colors to hold across many frames. That's where Styleframe can sit beside Procreate. It's an AI video and motion tool that works from your own reference images.

For example, you might settle on a palette and key frames in Procreate, then use those images as references in Styleframe.

You keep your compositing, color management, and finishing in the tools where they already live. As always, check the final frames against your sampled hex values, since style transfer is guided by references and not guaranteed to reproduce an exact color.

Quick answers

Can I pick a color from a photo without inserting it into my artwork? Yes. Use Canvas > Reference > Image, then touch and hold on the reference image.

How do I get the hex code of the color I sampled? Open the Color panel's Value tab and read the hexadecimal value.

Can Procreate sample colors from my screen outside the app? No. Take a screenshot, import it, and sample from that.

Why does the sampled color look slightly wrong? Usually it's a layer sitting above your photo, image noise at the sampled pixel, or a color profile mismatch. Hide overlays, blur a duplicate to average the area, and confirm your color settings.

What's the fastest way to get a whole palette from an image? Use the Palettes tab to create a palette from a photo, then refine the result with manual eyedropper picks for any key accent colors.

To copy a color from a picture in Procreate, import the photo onto your canvas (Actions > Add > Insert a photo), then touch and hold the color you want to open the eyedropper. Drag to preview shades and lift your finger or Apple Pencil to set the sampled color as your active color. If you'd rather not put the photo on your canvas, open it in Canvas > Reference and touch and hold on the reference image instead.

Below are the four reliable ways to sample color from an image, how to get precise values, and how to carry those colors into an After Effects or Nuke pipeline.

Method 1: Sample from a photo on your canvas

This is the most direct route and the one most tutorials cover.

1. Open or create a canvas.
2. Tap the Actions icon (wrench), choose Add, then Insert a photo. Pick the image from your library.
3. Position and scale the image, then tap the Transform tool again to confirm. The photo lands on its own layer.
4. Touch and hold on the color you want. The eyedropper loupe appears.
5. Drag to preview other pixels. The loupe shows the new color on top and your previous color below, which makes quick side-by-side comparisons easy.
6. Lift to confirm. The sampled color is now your active color, ready to paint with.

The default activation is touch and hold. You can change it under Actions > Prefs > Gesture controls > Eyedropper, where you can map it to a different gesture or a Quick Menu action. If you sample often, assigning it to a gesture or Quick Menu shortcut saves a lot of taps.

Sampling from a flattened view

The eyedropper reads what you see on the canvas, so anything visible above your photo, such as a sketch, a tint layer, or an adjustment layer, can contaminate the result. Hide those layers before sampling if you need the photo's true color.

Method 2: Sample from the Reference companion

If you want to keep the photo out of your artwork entirely, use Reference.

1. Open Actions > Canvas and turn on Reference.
2. Tap Image in the Reference window and import a photo (or choose Canvas to reference your own artwork).
3. Touch and hold on the reference image. The eyedropper activates, and the sampled color becomes your active color.

Two quirks are worth knowing. First, the hold duration in the Reference window isn't adjustable, so it can feel slightly slower than on the canvas. Second, it works even if your canvas eyedropper is set to a different gesture. If it seems unresponsive, give it a beat longer than you expect before assuming it's broken.

This method is the cleanest for color-matching work, since your layer stack never contains the reference and nothing ends up in your export.

Method 3: Generate a palette from a photo

When you need a whole scheme rather than one color, you can have Procreate build the palette.

1. Open the Color panel and go to the Palettes tab.
2. Create a new palette and choose the option to build it from a photo.
3. Select your image. Procreate generates a palette of swatches drawn from the image.

Once a palette is active, its swatches sit at the bottom of every Color panel mode.

Auto-generated palettes lean toward dominant colors. They can miss a small accent, such as a rim light or a logo color, that matters for your design. Pick those manually with the eyedropper and add them to the palette.

Method 4: Copy a color from a web page or another app

Procreate can't sample outside its own canvas, so the practical workaround is a screenshot.

1. Take a screenshot of the page, app, or video frame.
2. Insert it into Procreate (Method 1) or load it into the Reference companion (Method 2).
3. Sample as usual.

Remember that a screenshot is a rendering of the page on your display, so it reflects your device's screen settings and any compression applied to the image. For brand colors, check the source's published hex values if they exist and treat the screenshot as a fallback.

Getting precise values, not just a nice-looking color

Picking a color by eye and capturing a color you can reproduce elsewhere are different tasks. If the color has to leave Procreate, a few habits help.

Read the hex or RGB values

Open the Color panel and switch to the Value tab. It offers precision sliders along with numerical and hexadecimal values for the active color. After sampling, check the hex there and note it.

Avoid sampling noise

Photos contain grain, compression artifacts, and texture. A single-pixel sample can land on an outlier and give you a color that isn't representative of the area. To average it:

• Duplicate the photo layer and apply a strong Gaussian blur (Adjustments > Gaussian Blur) or Pixelate.
• Sample from the blurred copy.
• Delete the copy when you're done.

This gives you the average tone of a region instead of the luck of the pixel.

Check your color profile

Procreate canvases have a color profile, and the values you read are relative to it. If you're matching colors to an After Effects comp, make sure the canvas profile and your AE project's working color space are understood on both sides. An sRGB hex typed into a project with a different working space, or viewed on a wide-gamut display, will not look identical. Verify visually on a calibrated reference when accuracy matters.

Troubleshooting: when the eyedropper won't pick the color

• Nothing happens on touch and hold. Check Gesture controls to confirm the eyedropper is enabled and hasn't been remapped. In the Reference window, hold a little longer.
• The color is off from the photo. A layer above the photo is probably tinting the result. Hide overlays, adjustment layers, and any layers with blend modes, then sample again.
• The photo isn't where you expect. Confirm you're sampling the visible canvas, and that the image layer is visible and at full opacity.
• You're on a locked or hidden layer. Make sure the layer containing your photo is visible.
• The color looks different after you paint with it. Check your brush's opacity, blend mode, and Color Dynamics. The sampled color may be fine while the stroke alters it.

Bringing sampled colors into an After Effects pipeline

Procreate is often a quick color-study tool for motion designers: you pull a palette from a client photo or mood board, then build styleframes or designs elsewhere. A simple handoff keeps things consistent:

1. Sample your colors and record the hex values from the Value tab.
2. Build a palette swatch strip in Procreate with your final selections, labeled in the layer names or a notes layer.
3. Export a reference PNG of the swatch strip and keep it with the project files.
4. In After Effects, enter hex values into a Solid, Fill effect, or shape color, or use the eyedropper on the imported swatch PNG to verify them. Keep the project's color management settings in mind.

The same values carry into Premiere Pro, Cinema 4D, Blender, or Nuke. The eyedropper-on-reference habit translates well to those tools too, since you can always sample from the exported swatch image.

Where Styleframe fits when the palette is only the start

A palette pulled from a photo gets you the colors, but motion work needs those colors to hold across many frames. That's where Styleframe can sit beside Procreate. It's an AI video and motion tool that works from your own reference images.

For example, you might settle on a palette and key frames in Procreate, then use those images as references in Styleframe.

You keep your compositing, color management, and finishing in the tools where they already live. As always, check the final frames against your sampled hex values, since style transfer is guided by references and not guaranteed to reproduce an exact color.

Quick answers

Can I pick a color from a photo without inserting it into my artwork? Yes. Use Canvas > Reference > Image, then touch and hold on the reference image.

How do I get the hex code of the color I sampled? Open the Color panel's Value tab and read the hexadecimal value.

Can Procreate sample colors from my screen outside the app? No. Take a screenshot, import it, and sample from that.

Why does the sampled color look slightly wrong? Usually it's a layer sitting above your photo, image noise at the sampled pixel, or a color profile mismatch. Hide overlays, blur a duplicate to average the area, and confirm your color settings.

What's the fastest way to get a whole palette from an image? Use the Palettes tab to create a palette from a photo, then refine the result with manual eyedropper picks for any key accent colors.