This New App Makes It Easy To Pick a Color, Any Color

You never know when color inspiration will strike—and we can pretty much guarantee it won’t happen while you’re nervously sweating, staring down the paint chips in your local hardware store. Thankfully, there’s a new app, Swatches, that turns the gorgeous rainbow-filled world around you into your own personal color catalog.

Launched today for iOS, Swatches is a free app that’s like the Shazam of paint—point it at an object, and you’ll get a live updating bubble of color as you move your phone camera around. You can then capture particular hues and save them for later inspo. Each swatch comes with corresponding Pantone numbers, RGB values, hex codes, and matching Benjamin Moore paint colors. The saved swatches can be grouped into palettes, or shared with friends or on social.

This isn’t the first app to act as an in-pocket color picker; Pantone launched their own version last year that was really meant for designers, and came with a corresponding designer price tag of $8 per month, or $60 billed annually. But if you don’t need seamless syncing with Adobe Creative Cloud, we think freebie Swatches will serve you just fine. Plus, you’ll finally discover that your cat’s chin is Natural Brown, which is a gift in and of itself.

Check out Swatches online or in the App Store.

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