Think of Color Extractor as your color x-ray machine. Feed it a CGATS.17 spectral file, an ICC profile, or an RGB TIFF image, and it'll show you the true shape of your color gamut, then hand you tidy, downloadable swatches you can actually use in real design work.
No subscriptions, no mysterious "enterprise" pricing. You'll need to sign up or log in the first time you open a tool — it keeps your work tied to your account and the site secure. After that, just upload, analyze, and walk away with the goods. (We also ask for your email the first time you download. Just once, pinky promise.)
A CGATS.17 file holds measured spectral data from a printed chart. Drop it in and we'll compute the 2D/3D hull (think of it as the shell to an egg), full point cloud (every color your device can actually produce) and or girdle.
Want to see how a specific printer/paper combo behaves? Load an ICC profile and we'll sample its device space and render that gamut in glorious 3D.
Got an image full of colors you love? Upload an RGB TIFF and we'll enumerate every unique color, sort them, and turn them into vector swatches.
Once your data is in, you can spin the 3D gamut viewer, switch between the full point cloud, the hull, and the girdle silhouette, and compare two gamuts side by side. Need to convert a specific color? Pop open the Color Conversion panel and translate between Lab, RGB, and LCh on the fly.
The Color Gamut Comparison tab lets you line up two color gamuts and see exactly where they agree, overlap, and pull apart. It's the fastest way to answer "can this printer hit those colors?" before you commit to a run.
Load an ICC profile to begin
Every comparison starts with a baseline ICC profile. Drop in an .icc or .icm file and we'll sample its device space and build the reference gamut you'll compare everything against.
Add your comparison sources
Once the baseline is in, you can bring in a second source — or several. The comparison accepts the same file types as the main tool, plus a couple extra:
Load another .icc / .icm to compare two devices head-to-head — two printers, two papers, or a proof vs. a press.
Bring in exported Lab data from a previous session or a measured chart. TXT files from this app's own export round-trip straight back in.
Drop in an RGB TIFF and we'll enumerate every unique color, convert it to Lab, and build a gamut from the image's actual color population.
Multi-page PDFs are rasterized page-by-page, so each page becomes its own comparable dataset — handy for checking a whole proof book at once.
Pick two datasets to compare
Each source you add shows up as a card with its point count and hull volume. Select any two and the comparison view appears — overlay the gamuts in 3D, trace the 2D outline, and read off the volume summary to see which gamut contains the other.
Heads up: the first ICC profile is your anchor — you need one loaded before any comparison sources can be added. If you want to compare two plain datasets with no ICC, just load any profile as the anchor and then ignore it when selecting your pair.
Every analysis ends with a download. Here's the menu. Pick the format that fits your workflow, or grab 'em all (we don't judge).
The spreadsheet-lover's dream. Every point's L, a, b values in tidy tab-delimited rows, perfect for Excel, Google Sheets, or piping into your own scripts.
A standards-friendly CGATS.17 file you can round-trip back into profiling software or share with a print partner who speaks the language.
A plain-text dump with a header stamp and date, handy for notes, archives, or pasting into a README.
A raster PDF that recreates your TIFF pixel-for-pixel using its own embedded colors. Great for proofing and visual reference.
Tiled, labeled color patches as crisp vector art. Scale them to your heart's content. They'll never pixelate. This is the one that becomes an Adobe swatch file (more on that below ↓).
The Vector PDF download is your golden ticket to a custom Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ASE) file. Each patch is a labeled vector rectangle carrying its color value. Open it, lift the colors, and build a swatch library you can load straight into Illustrator or Photoshop.
Open the Vector PDF
Download the Vector PDF and open it in Adobe Illustrator (or Acrobat). The patches are real vector objects. Select any one and its fill tells you the exact color.
Select all the patches you want
In Illustrator, choose Select → All (or marquee the patches you love). Each rectangle is a separate object, so you can grab the whole set or cherry-pick your favorites.
Add them to your Swatches panel
With the patches selected, open the Swatches panel and click the New Swatch button (the little + at the bottom). Illustrator creates a swatch from each selected fill. Name them as you go or rename later.
Export as .ASE
From the Swatches panel menu, choose Save Swatch Library as ASE…. Pick a name, hit save, and boom. You've got a portable .ASE file you can load into any Adobe app via the Swatches panel menu → Open Swatch Library → Other Library….
Pro tip: In Lab mode, the Vector PDF labels each patch with its L/a/b values, so you can match them precisely to a brand standard or proofing target. In RGB mode, you get straight R/G/B labels. Toggle the mode before you download to get the numbers you need.
Load both a CGATS and an ICC profile to overlay two gamuts in 3D. It's the fastest way to see if a printer can hit your target colors before you print a single sheet.
The Color Conversion panel lets you nudge a single color across spaces, or paste a whole batch. Great for sanity-checking out-of-gamut warnings.
TIFF colors and patches can be sorted by luminance or hue. Pick the order that makes your swatch sheet read the way you want it to.
We genuinely love hearing from the creative community. Leave a note in the download prompt, comments button or visit SchillingInkjetConsulting.com to keep the conversation going.
That's the whole tour. Now go make something colorful. 🎨