Choosing Colors

T.C. Hollingsworth

The color chooser appears in many KDE applications, whenever you need to select a color. It lets you pick from a palette consisting of many predefined colors or mix your own when you want a specific color.


The color selector.

Selecting a color in System Settings.


Using Palettes

A palette is a set of predefined colors. You can find it on the right side of the color chooser window.

To select a color from a palette, simply click on it. The color will be displayed below the palette, along with its HTML hexadecimal code and name, if any.

To switch between them, use the drop down box above the color palette. Most palettes will display a grid consisting of the colors, except for the Named Colors, which lets you select from a list of names. Other special palettes include * Recent Colors *, which will display colors that you have recently selected, and * Custom Colors *, which will display custom colors that you have saved. For more information on setting custom colors, see the section called “Saving Custom Colors”

Mixing Colors

The color chooser also lets you mix your own colors. There are several ways to do this:

Using the Grid

The left side of the color chooser contains a large box, and a thinner box immediately to its right. You can use the left box to select the Hue and Saturation of the desired color based on the visual guide provided in the box. The right bar adjusts the Value. Adjust these to select the desired color, which is displayed in the lower-right corner of the window.

For more information on Hue, Saturation, and Value, see the section called “Hue/Saturation/Value”

Using the Eyedropper

The eyedropper tool allows you to select a color from your screen. To use it, select the eyedropper button to the right of the Add to Custom Colors button, and then click anywhere on your screen to select that color.

Hue/Saturation/Value

The lower-left corner of the screen allows you to manually enter the coordinates of the desired color in the Hue/Saturation/Value (HSV) color space. For more information on this, see the HSL and HSV article on Wikipedia.

These values are also updated when selecting a color by other methods, so they always accurately represent the currently selected color.

Red/Green/Blue

The lower-left corner of the screen also allows you to manually enter the coordinates of the desired color in the Red/Green/Blue (RGB) color model. For more information on this, see the RGB color model article on Wikipedia.

These values are also updated when selecting a color by other methods, so they always accurately represent the currently selected color.

HTML Hexadecimal Code

You may enter the HTML hexadecimal code representing the color in the lower-right corner of the screen. For more information on this, see the Web colors article on Wikipedia.

This value is also updated when selecting a color by other methods, so it always accurately represents the currently selected color.

Saving Custom Colors

After selecting a color, you may save it to the Custom Colors palette so you can find it later. To do so, click the Add to Custom Colors button. You can then find it by selecting the * Custom Colors * palette from the drop down box in the upper-right corner of the screen. For more information on using palettes, see the section called “Using Palettes”.