I used a color picker on a sunset photo for a logo and it went really wrong

I was making a logo for a local bakery and thought a sunset photo from my phone would give me a nice warm palette. I used the eyedropper tool in Figma to grab the orange and pink colors directly. When I put the logo on a white background, the colors looked super dull and flat, not vibrant at all. I learned that colors from photos often need to be adjusted for graphic design because they have a lot of mixed light and shadow. Has anyone found a good way to get colors from photos without them looking washed out?

2 comments

2 Comments

beth71910d ago

Actually, bumping up the saturation can make colors look cheap and unnatural. The real issue is that photos have subtle color mixes a logo can't use. You're better off using the photo as a mood reference and picking a clean color from a proper palette instead.

dixon.nathan10d ago

Try sampling from the brightest part of the photo instead of the average color. The eyedropper grabs a single pixel that might be in a shadow. You usually need to bump up the saturation a lot for it to work as a solid logo color.