ColorZilla What is it, what is it for and what are the benefits of using it?

Although it is true, color is a factor of great importance in any branch of design and, failing that, it is an essential element in web design, currently. Since, in addition to the structure and forms, colors are responsible for induce certain actions by usersBecause proper use of colors can improve the user experience.

Thus, it is considered that colors are capable of motivating moods and, with it, influencing people's decision making. Therefore, a bad decision about this aspect in web design, could lead you straight to failure. But, this can be avoided with the help of ColorZilla.

In this sense, it is a browser extension widely used by graphic designers and web developers to find out, in a simple way, a specific color code of the web or all the colors that it uses. Next, we explain What is ColorZilla for, how should you handle it and some alternatives in this regard.

What is ColorZilla and what is this tool for?

Basically, ColorZilla is considered one of the most essential tools for optimal management by web developers, designers or frontend. Since this is a browser extension that facilitates different tasks related to color and thus, it allows to obtain a color reading from any point of the web browser, quickly adjusting it and pasting it in another design program.

That way, is an addon available in Mozilla Firefox and an addon for Chrome It has numerous users worldwide. Which can use this tool for free and from any operating system, thanks to the fact that it is cross-platform (supports Windows, Mac OS and Linux). Among its main characteristics, we find that works with color palettes created by yourself or by the community, since it has a Photoshop-style color picker.

Likewise, has dropper and therefore, it allows you to select a color from the web that you have on the screen to see its details (value in RGB or hexadecimal) and shows you the class of ID of the element you are acting on. For its part, it offers the possibility of zoom page quickly.

In addition to providing a palette viewer and editor, it allows automatic copying and has full RGB, HSV and HTML color support. Added to that, it is worth distinguishing that, it lets you choose predefined colors and save the most used ones via custom palettes, for simplicity.

Learn step by step how to use ColorZilla to migrate colors from your browser to other programs.

As we indicated previously, ColorZilla has the ability to analyze all the colors of a web page and thus, it allows to obtain a color reading to adjust and paste it in another design program, such as Photoshop. Which means that, offers the possibility to migrate colors from your browser to other softwares. However, although many users are aware of this function, they don't really know how they should proceed to do it correctly.

Reason why, it is necessary to learn step by step how to use this browser extension to capture colors from there and get inspiration with the most used. For this, first of all, it is appropriate that install this add-on in your preferred browser. That is, through Google Chrome or through the Mozilla Firefox.

Thus, the steps to follow will be the following:

Initially, you have to enter the Google Chrome web store, if you want to install ColorZilla on this platform. In case you prefer to do it from Mozillayou should access their page of complements or Addons.
After that, directly from the corresponding search engine, search for “ColorZilla”.
Once you find this tool among the results, access it and click the "Add to Chrome" or "Add to Firefox" button.

Having done the above, after downloading the browser plug-in, this will be shown in the top bar of Chrome or Firefox with its corresponding icon.

Now, to migrate the browser colors, the procedure to be performed is:

Access the website of interest and locate the ColorZilla icon at the top of the web browser, to click on it.
With that, a menu will be displayed with several options and among them, select "Pick Color From Page" To start choosing any pixel, it will catch your attention on the web. Then, at the top of the web, you can see a black bar where RGB, hexadecimal, etc. are indicated..

After that, to migrate colors from your browser to other design programs, choose the “Selection average” option in the drop-down menu of the black box and proceed to select the color to migrate, freely.

Next, the chosen color will be copied by the same tool and just click on the ColorZilla icon and click on “Copy To Clipboard…”. Verifying that the selected color is the same as that displayed in the option "Color Picker" from the drop down menu.

In addition to that, if you want to see the history of all your color captures, you simply have to access the menu of the tool in question and click on “Picker Color History”.

Added to that, at the bottom, you also have three more options of interest which are:

Color webpage Analyzer: It is a function that has the ability to analyze each and every color of the web page you are studying. In this way, you will get a color palette that includes all those used on that platform.
Palette Browser: Basically, it's about a color palette showing all possible combinations and lets know what is the RGB color you choose.
CSS Gradient Generator: Through this option, you will access an additional page where you can create, as you like, CSS gradients whose code you will easily obtain (copying and pasting).

The best alternative browser extensions to ColorZilla you should know

Today, in addition to ColorZillaThere are also other browser plugins that offer the same functionality, in a way. So, to have a greater range of options when analyzing and migrating the colors of a certain web page, it is important to know what are the best such solutions.

Here are three of them:

Eye dropper

Refers to an open source extension, available in Google Chrome and Chromium. Which, in the first instance, allows its users identify choose colors from any web page. For that, they will have to install the extension, open it and click the “Choose color” option to proceed to choose the indicated pixel. Once this is done, the same plugin will be in charge of display the hexadecimal code so you can copy and migrate it. In other words, its operation is very similar to that of ColorZilla.

Among other features, also provides a history column, in an orderly way, from where you can view all the colors you have previously copied and get them later. It also has a color palette useful for adjust the tone to use.

Color Picker

It's found Available in both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and it consists of a useful extension to search for the desired color directly from the browser. For that, you just have to click on the toolbar icon and once the user interface is displayed, you can access four different sections. Added to that, it contains a large icon that offers a color palette and can be used to represent the user interface regarding the color picker.

That way, you can choose a new color or modify the tone. Also, once you choose a shade, on the right side you will see six different formats with their corresponding valuesNow, it should be noted that this web plugin not designed to select or migrate colors from web pages, specifically. Since, it simply offers you the possibility of choose and copy colors from a user interface (UI).

Color Dropper

Finally, we emphasize this other online tool Available as an extension in Google Chrome. Which stands out for offering a specific option to be able to copy the color hexadecimal code of the desired color, automatically. Thanks to that, it is an easy to use eyedropper tool, even, because works via keyboard shortcuts too. In this sense, to capture and copy said code from any web page to the clipboard of the computer.

You will simply have to press the Color Dropper icon in the Chrome toolbar or use the following default keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac: