Get average color of image via Javascript

AFAIK, the only way to do this is with <canvas/>...

DEMO V2: http://jsfiddle.net/xLF38/818/

Note, this will only work with images on the same domain and in browsers that support HTML5 canvas:

function getAverageRGB(imgEl) {

    var blockSize = 5, // only visit every 5 pixels
        defaultRGB = {r:0,g:0,b:0}, // for non-supporting envs
        canvas = document.createElement('canvas'),
        context = canvas.getContext && canvas.getContext('2d'),
        data, width, height,
        i = -4,
        length,
        rgb = {r:0,g:0,b:0},
        count = 0;

    if (!context) {
        return defaultRGB;
    }

    height = canvas.height = imgEl.naturalHeight || imgEl.offsetHeight || imgEl.height;
    width = canvas.width = imgEl.naturalWidth || imgEl.offsetWidth || imgEl.width;

    context.drawImage(imgEl, 0, 0);

    try {
        data = context.getImageData(0, 0, width, height);
    } catch(e) {
        /* security error, img on diff domain */
        return defaultRGB;
    }

    length = data.data.length;

    while ( (i += blockSize * 4) < length ) {
        ++count;
        rgb.r += data.data[i];
        rgb.g += data.data[i+1];
        rgb.b += data.data[i+2];
    }

    // ~~ used to floor values
    rgb.r = ~~(rgb.r/count);
    rgb.g = ~~(rgb.g/count);
    rgb.b = ~~(rgb.b/count);

    return rgb;

}

For IE, check out excanvas.

Figured I'd post a project I recently came across to get dominant color:

Color Thief

A script for grabbing the dominant color or a representative color palette from an image. Uses javascript and canvas.

The other solutions mentioning and suggesting dominant color never really answer the question in proper context ("in javascript"). Hopefully this project will help those who want to do just that.