shademix.com

What It Is

Shademix is a color picker, palette, and color-system lookup tool built for design and creative workflows. It is available as a web app/PWA, Chrome extension, and Figma plugin. It can sample colors from images, a camera, or screenshots, supports precise sampling with a magnifier, and can extract main colors and dominant colors to generate palettes of up to 25 colors.

Core Capabilities

Its core value is not just grabbing HEX codes, but extending color picking into cross-system matching and review. Lookup supports inputs such as RAL, NCS, Munsell, HKS, Federal Standard 595, Pantone-equivalent, as well as RGB, HSL, LAB, OKLCH, and provides nearest matches based on ΔE2000. Harmonies uses OKLCH to calculate complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic, monochromatic, and other harmony relationships. Tools covers WCAG contrast checks, color-blindness simulation, metamerism previews under different light sources, CMYK gamut warnings, and OKLCH gradient generation, making it useful for web accessibility, brand colors, and print-risk checks.

Pricing and Licensing

The site clearly emphasizes no registration, no ads, and no tracking. The web version has no Pro subscription, and features are unlocked by default, with optional voluntary donations via Revolut. However, the text also mentions a Free tier/Pro export and restoring Pro purchases on iOS, so the commercial positioning is not entirely consistent. In terms of licensing, Pantone is provided only as a PE- visual approximation and is not officially authorized; official color guides are still required for final print validation.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are privacy and offline capability: photos and palettes are processed locally, with no backend or telemetry. Export formats include JSON, CSS, PDF, Adobe ASE, GIMP GPL, Tailwind, SVG, Figma, Sketch, Procreate, and more, fitting both design and front-end workflows. The main limitation is that palettes are mostly stored locally, so clearing the cache may cause data loss and manual backups are needed. There is also no obvious support for team collaboration, cloud sync, permission management, or similar features.

Who It’s For and Access from China

Shademix is suitable for brand designers, UI/web designers, interior/decor color matching, photography post-production, and individuals or small teams that need prepress self-checks. Access and payment availability from mainland China are not specified, so they should be considered unknown. If access is unstable, alternatives include Adobe Color, Coolors, Color Hunt, Figma plugins, and official Pantone/RAL/NCS tools.