Color Picker in Procreate: How to Sample and Match Logo Colors

The short answer

Procreate's color picker is called the eyedropper. By default, you activate it by touching and holding one finger on the canvas, or by tapping the square modify button in the left sidebar and then touching the canvas. A circular loupe appears. Drag it over the color you want and lift your finger. That color becomes your active color, and you can read its hex code in the Color panel or save it to a palette.

For logo work, the eyedropper gives you an on-screen RGB value taken from pixels. It does not give you an official brand specification. Procreate is a raster (pixel-based) application. Vector artwork is built from mathematically defined paths and fills, and its color values are stored exactly in the file. A sampled pixel color can be close to the intended color without being identical to it. Treat a sampled value as a working match, and confirm it against the brand's documented colors whenever they exist.

Step by step: sampling a color from logo artwork

• 1. Import the logo image into a canvas using Actions > Add > Insert a photo or Insert a file, or open the image as a new canvas.
• 2. Zoom in on a large, flat area of the color you want to capture, away from edges, gradients, shadows and text.
• 3. Touch and hold one finger on that area, or tap the square button between the brush size and opacity sliders in the left sidebar and then touch the canvas.
• 4. Watch the loupe ring. The upper half shows the color under your finger. The lower half shows your previous color.
• 5. Move until the upper half shows a solid, representative color, then lift your finger to set it as the active color.
• 6. Tap the color circle at the top right to open the Color panel. Note the hex code in the Value tab.
• 7. Open the Palettes tab and tap an empty swatch to store the color, so you don't have to sample it again.

Changing how the eyedropper is triggered

If touch-and-hold fires by accident, or doesn't fire at all, go to Actions > Prefs > Gesture controls > Eyedropper. You can choose other triggers there, such as pairing the square button with a touch or with Apple Pencil, and you can adjust the delay before the eyedropper appears. Menu names and options can vary between Procreate versions. If your screens look different, check the current version's in-app help.

Building a palette directly from an image

Recent versions of Procreate can generate a palette from an image. In the Palettes tab, the plus menu offers options to create a palette from the camera, from a file or from Photos. This is a fast way to collect a logo's main colors. However, the generated swatches come from analyzing the image, so they may include edge, shadow or compression colors that aren't real brand colors. Review each swatch and delete any that don't belong.

Why a sampled color may not match the logo

• Anti-aliasing: the edges of shapes blend into the background, so pixels near an edge contain intermediate colors. Sample from the interior of a shape.
• Compression: JPEG and similar formats introduce artifacts that shift pixel colors slightly. A clean PNG export, or the original vector file, gives more reliable values.
• Layer visibility: the eyedropper picks up what is visible on the canvas, so a semi-transparent layer or blend mode above the logo changes the sampled result. Hide overlapping layers before sampling.
• Color profile: canvases can use different RGB profiles, such as sRGB or Display P3, or a CMYK profile. The same image can produce different numbers depending on the canvas profile and the profile embedded in the source.
• Screen versus print: a hex code describes screen color. It is not a Pantone or CMYK print specification, and converting between them requires a deliberate decision, not just a sample.

Verifying the result

• Sample the same flat area two or three times in different spots. If the hex codes differ, the area isn't truly flat, or the image is compressed.
• Paint a block of the sampled color next to the original on a new layer and compare them at high zoom.
• Compare the hex code with the brand guidelines or the original vector file, if you have either. Those documented values take precedence over sampled ones.
• Record which canvas color profile you sampled in, so others can reproduce or correct the values later.

Using sampled colors in vector logo artwork

Once you have a working palette, you can enter the hex codes into a vector editor to rebuild or recolor the logo. Keep in mind that a hex value you sampled from an image is a reconstruction. For final digital delivery, label it as an approximate match unless it has been confirmed. For print delivery, get the documented CMYK or spot color values from the brand owner rather than deriving them from a screen sample.

Being able to open or sample a logo file doesn't mean you have permission to reuse the logo. A file extension also doesn't prove what the file contains. An SVG or PDF, for example, may hold embedded raster images instead of editable paths. Confirm usage rights and check the file's actual contents before preparing artwork for delivery.

Gaps in this guide

No version-specific documentation, measurements or test results were supplied for this article. The steps above reflect Procreate's generally documented eyedropper and palette behavior, and exact menu labels, gesture options and palette-generation features may differ in your version. Accuracy figures for sampled or auto-generated colors aren't given, because no measured evidence was available.