Convert between RGB and Color Names
Editor's Note: This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week
One function converts between RGB and color names, in both directions!
The function COLORNAMES accepts either RGB values or color names as its inputs, and returns the color names and RGB values from the palette of your choice. The color palette is selected by the first input, the trailing inputs are either color names or RGB values:
* Input RGB are matched using CIEDE2000, CIE94 (default), CIE76, DIN99, CMCl:c, or RGB color difference (deltaE) calculation.
* Input color name matching is case insensitive with optional spaces, except for some palettes where CamelCase is significant.
COLORNAMES always returns the same two output arguments:
1. Cell array of the matched color names (cell of 1xN char).
2. Numeric array of the RGB values (a standard MATLAB colormap).
A list of the available palettes is returned by calling COLORNAMES with no inputs.
Three bonus functions are also included:
* COLORNAMES_CUBE shows the colors from any palette in a 3D cube. The cube may be Lab, LCh, DIN99, HSV, XYZ, or RGB.
* COLORNAMES_VIEW shows the colors from any palette in 2D axes, and sorting them by different color space values (Lab, XYZ, YUV, HSV, or RGB).
* COLORNAMES_DELTAE creates a figure comparing the different color difference calculations (deltaE, e.g. CIEDE2000, CIE94, CIE76, DIN99, CMCl:c, or RGB). For more information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference
Suggestions of useful palettes (with named colors) are very welcome!
### Examples ###
>> palettes = colornames()
palettes =
'Alphabet'
'AmstradCPC'
'AppleII'
'Bang'
'BS381C'
'CGA'
'Crayola'
'CSS'
'dvips'
'Foster'
'HTML4'
'ISCC'
'Kelly'
'MacBeth'
'MATLAB'
'Natural'
'R'
'RAL'
'Resene'
'Resistor'
'SherwinWilliams'
'SVG'
'Tableau'
'Thesaurus'
'Trubetskoy'
'Wikipedia'
'Wolfram'
'X11'
'xcolor'
'xkcd'
>> colornames('Natural') % all color names for one palette
ans =
'Black'
'Blue'
'Green'
'Red'
'White'
'Yellow'
>> [names,rgb] = colornames('HTML4','blue','red','teal','olive')
names =
'Blue'
'Red'
'Teal'
'Olive'
rgb =
0 0 1.0000
1.0000 0 0
0 0.5020 0.5020
0.5020 0.5020 0
>> colornames('HTML4',[0,0.5,1;1,0.5,0]) % default deltaE = CIE94
ans =
'Blue'
'Red'
>> colornames('HTML4',[0,0.5,1;1,0.5,0],'rgb') % specify deltaE
ans =
'Teal'
'Olive'
>> colornames('MATLAB','c','m','y','k')
ans =
'Cyan'
'Magenta'
'Yellow'
'Black'
>> [names,rgb] = colornames('MATLAB');
>> [char(strcat(names,{' '})),num2str(rgb)]
ans =
Black 0 0 0
Blue 0 0 1
Cyan 0 1 1
Green 0 1 0
Magenta 1 0 1
Red 1 0 0
White 1 1 1
Yellow 1 1 0
Cite As
Stephen Cobeldick (2021). Convert between RGB and Color Names (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/48155-convert-between-rgb-and-color-names), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .
Comments and Ratings (23)
MATLAB Release Compatibility
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS LinuxCategories
Tags
Acknowledgements
Inspired by: rgb.m, name2rgb, Color name identification: fuzzycolor, str2rgb, GETRGB (v1.0), rgb2name, GNU Emacs Color matrix, RGB.m, RGB triple of color name, version 2, Color Checker Chart, CubeHelix Colormap Generator: Beautiful and Versatile!, ColorBrewer: Attractive and Distinctive Colormaps, Intuitive RGB color values from XKCD, rgbmap color maps, alphabet, generate_ishihara(image_name, varargin), colors(name), rgb2map, color, Color segmentation by Delta E color difference
Inspired: Maximally Distinct Color Generator, colorpicker, MatPlotLib Perceptually Uniform Colormaps, Message Logger
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!Discover Live Editor
Create scripts with code, output, and formatted text in a single executable document.
Select a Web Site
Choose a web site to get translated content where available and see local events and offers. Based on your location, we recommend that you select: .
Select web siteYou can also select a web site from the following list:
Americas
- América Latina (Español)
- Canada (English)
- United States (English)
Europe
- Belgium (English)
- Denmark (English)
- Deutschland (Deutsch)
- España (Español)
- Finland (English)
- France (Français)
- Ireland (English)
- Italia (Italiano)
- Luxembourg (English)
- Netherlands (English)
- Norway (English)
- Österreich (Deutsch)
- Portugal (English)
- Sweden (English)
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom (English)
@Selena Milanovic: the usual ways to control plotted line colors is to either set the axes ColorOrder property or to call plot in a loop (using a different color on each iteration), in either case using the colormap of your choice. If you want to specify the colormap colors by name, then COLORNAMES() could be used to generate that colormap, e.g.:
[~,M] = colornames('SVG','mintcream','tomato','olive','papayawhip');
X = linspace(0,pi*3,1000);
Y = bsxfun(@(x,n)n*sin(x+2*n*pi/N), X.', 1:size(M,1));
axes('ColorOrder',M,'NextPlot','replacechildren')
plot(X,Y, 'linewidth',4)
Hi, could you please make an example of how I can add this to my code?
Thank you!
figure(1)
plot(time,GLCc_ch,'Linewidth',3)
xlabel('time (s)', 'Fontname','LM Roman 10','Fontsize', 40)
ylabel('GLC_c change (%)','Fontname','LM Roman 10','Fontsize', 40)
set(gca,'Fontname','Times New Roman','FontSize',40,'box','off')
This is all I want in life
Yes, your 3/18/2019 version fixed the bug for me. Thank you for the update!
@KAE: thank you for the feedback and rating. Unfortunately your fix (for MATLAB versions R2014b and later) removes the colors of the text boxes, which is rather the point of the deltaE GUI. It is easy to keep the original GUI functionality by simply calling SET separately after the TEXT calls:
tmp = @(s,n) text((2*n-1)*ones(1,N)/(2*dEn), mean(Y.',2), zeros(1,N), s,...
'Parent',axh, 'HorizontalAlignment','center');
txh = cellfun(tmp, Nam, num2cell(1:dEn), 'UniformOutput',false);
tmp = @(h,c,b) set(h, {'BackgroundColor'},num2cell(c,2), {'Color'},num2cell(b(:,[1,1,1]),2));
cellfun(tmp, txh, RGB, BAW)
I will update the submission shortly with this fix.
In R2018b, I get the same error as Tasneem for colornames_deltaE('HTML4',jet(16)). You can get around it by editing a line in colornames_deltaE,
tmp = @(s,c,b,n) text((2*n-1)*ones(1,N)/(2*dEn), mean(Y.',2), zeros(1,N), s,...
'Parent',axh, 'HorizontalAlignment','center');
In other words, comment out {'BackgroundColor'},num2cell(c,2), {'Color'},num2cell(b(:,[1,1,1]),2)).
Very useful otherwise!
Wonderful. Well designed and very useful!
@Tasneem Al-Tmimi: the error message you show for COLORNAMES is exactly what I would expect, and is exactly as documented in the help and shown in the HTML examples: you provided some color names that cannot be matched and therefore an error is thrown, exactly as documented.
What MATLAB version do you use? I wrote this submission in R2010b, and there is absolutely no guarantee that the graphics functions will work with any post R2014b version (with the new handle graphics engine). See:
<https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/graphics_transition/major-graphics-changes-in-r2014b.html>
Yes, I know they are functions and am calling them from the command window exactly the same commands you have in the example tab
>> colornames_deltaE('HTML4',jet(16))
The Error is:
Error using text
Value cell array handle dimension must match handle vector length
Error in
colornames_deltaE>@(s,c,b,n)text((2*n-1)*ones(1,N)/(2*dEn),mean(Y.',2),zeros(1,N),s,'Parent',axh,'HorizontalAlignment','center',{'BackgroundColor'},num2cell(c,2),{'Color'},num2cell(b(:,[1,1,1]),2))
(line 83)
tmp = @(s,c,b,n) text((2*n-1)*ones(1,N)/(2*dEn), mean(Y.',2), zeros(1,N), s, 'Parent',axh,
'HorizontalAlignment','center', {'BackgroundColor'},num2cell(c,2), {'Color'},num2cell(b(:,[1,1,1]),2));
Error in colornames_deltaE (line 84)
txh = cellfun(tmp, Nam, RGB, BAW, num2cell(1:dEn), 'UniformOutput',false);
=========================================================================
>> colornames_view('dvips','Lab')
Undefined function or variable 'prv'.
Error in colornames_view/cnvResize (line 245)
tmp = get(prv, 'EdgeColor');
Error using colornames_view (line 88)
Error while evaluating Figure SizeChangedFcn.
You might see this error if any of the variables in the figure's SizeChangedFcn are undefined when the figure becomes visible. Consider waiting to set the figure's Visible property to 'on' until all the SizeChangedFcn variables are defined.
Error using cellfun
matlab.graphics.primitive.Text output type is not supported. Set 'UniformOutput' to false.
Error in colornames_view/cnvTxtDraw (line 209)
txh = cellfun(txf,clr,num2cell(rgb,2),num2cell(baw(:,[1,1,1]),2));
Error in colornames_view (line 291)
cnvTxtDraw()
=========================================================================
>> colornames('CSS', 'bleu', 'blanc', 'rouge')
Error using colornames>cnNoMatch (line 293)
The palette 'CSS' does not support these colors: 'bleu', 'blanc', 'rouge'.
Some color names that are similar to those input strings:
bleu -> 'Blue', 'Black', 'Peru', 'Plum', 'Red', 'Aqua', 'Beige', 'Bisque', 'Brown', 'Cyan', 'Gold', 'Gray'.
blanc -> 'Black', 'Blue', 'Cyan', 'Tan', 'Beige', 'Brown', 'Gray', 'Khaki', 'Lime', 'Linen', 'Navy', 'Olive'.
rouge -> 'Azure', 'Beige', 'Blue', 'Orange', 'Aqua', 'Brown', 'Coral', 'Gold', 'Lime', 'Olive', 'Plum'.
Call COLORNAMES('CSS') to list all color names for that palette,
or COLORNAMES_VIEW('CSS') to view the palette in a 2D list,
or COLORNAMES_CUBE('CSS') to view the palette in a 3D cube.
Error in colornames (line 240)
cnNoMatch(pal,clr,arg(idn==0))
@Tasneem Al-Tmimi : what error message are you getting? How are you calling the function/s? Did you download and unzip the files onto your MATLAB path?
Note that there are no scripts in this submission, only functions. If you do not know the difference then this might cause you to use them incorrectly. Read the MATLAB documentation to know more:
<https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/scripts-and-functions.html>
Hi, am trying to use the files, but I always get an error am running the script file
can you help me please ??
Saved my thesis, thanks a lot!