What it does
Adaptive Backgrounds is a jQuery plugin that extracts an image’s dominant colour and uses it as a background. It works with marked image elements and has a separate option for elements whose image is set through CSS.
Include jQuery and the plugin, mark the chosen images with data-adaptive-background, then call $.adaptiveBackground.run(). By default, the background is applied to the immediate parent; a selector can choose another target. CSS-background use adds data-ab-css-background to the element.
Shading or blending can change the detected colour, with a shade percentage from -1 to 1. Optional text adjustment chooses a light or dark text colour. The ab-color-found event exposes both the dominant colour and detected palette; a success callback runs once per image.
Pixel extraction uses browser canvas data. Images on another domain need permission for cross-origin access, or extraction fails. The project depends on jQuery and builds on RGBaster.
Strengths
- The target element and colour-shading behaviour can be configured.
- Events and per-image callbacks expose the extracted results.
Watch out for
- Images on another domain need cross-origin pixel-access permission.
- Integration requires jQuery.
Best for
- Image-led web layouts that derive surrounding colour from their artwork.
Sources
- GitHub - briangonzalez/jquery.adaptive-backgrounds.js: 🦎 A jQuery plugin for extracting the dominant color from images and applying the color to their parent. · GitHub (Oct 28, 2026)
- jquery.adaptive-backgrounds.js • A jQuery plugin for extracting dominant colors from images and applying it to its parent (Oct 28, 2026)
- jquery.adaptive-backgrounds.js/package.json at master · briangonzalez/jquery.adaptive-backgrounds.js · GitHub (Oct 28, 2026)