The Color panel is used to choose color for various brush tools and to apply color to the stroke and fill of vector shapes, lines, and text.
A pop-up version of the Color panel may appear when choosing color from within other dialogs.
About the Color panel
The Color panel can operate in several color modes—RGB, HSL, CMYK, LAB and Grayscale—and has various ways of presenting color options—using sliders, a color wheel (HSL only), or color boxes. Color tints can also be applied from within the panel.
![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/affinity-docs/help/photo/en-US.lproj/images/panel_clr_RGBslider.png)
The active color selector is shown at the front of the two color selectors. Choosing a new color will apply it to the active color selector.
For vector shapes, lines and text, the color selector is for stroke and fill color instead of Foreground and Background color, respectively.
The Gradient Tool changes the appearance of the Color panel. Only one color selector swatch is shown to represent the color of the currently selected stop on the gradient.
Using the Color panel
With the Color panel, colors can be set for use by a tool in just a few clicks. Opacity and noise are further color attributes which can be applied.
To set the color of a selector:- Choose a color from the color model's Sliders, Wheel (HSL only), or Boxes.
- Click the picked color swatch.
- Click the None swatch to make the color completely transparent (for the tool, fill or stroke).
- Click the double-headed arrow. The colors switch but the active swatch selector remains the same.
You can switch color selectors by pressing the X .
To adjust opacity or noise setting:Color selection preferences and color models
When choosing colors in the Color panel, you can choose from various selection preferences and color model values. The color selection preferences are changed in the Panel Preferences menu.
Depending on the color model selected, you can also choose to work in 8 bit, 16 bit or Percentage mode.
Some of the selection methods allow you to set color using values other than RGB. This doesn't change the working color profile of the document, but changes the input values for the colors.
You can specify color values for RGB, HSL, CMYK and Grayscale depending on the pop-up menu in the Color panel. This is not the same as the working color profile. For example, if your working profile is an RGB profile, choosing 100% K (black) from the CMYK color model doesn't convert your document to CMYK. Instead the color applied will be an RGB approximation of 100% K (black). However, if you convert or export the document to a CMYK profile, the 100% K (black) will be honored.
The following color selection preferences are available from the Panel Preferences menu.
- Wheel—HSL Color Wheel
- Drag on the outer ring to set the hue.
- Drag in the triangle to set saturation and lightness.
- Sliders—RGB, HSL, CMYK, LAB, Grayscale
- Select the color mode from the pop-up menu.
- (Optional) From the Panel Preferences menu, select 8 bit, 16 bit or Percentage.
- Drag sliders or type directly into the value boxes to set the color values.
- Boxes—Hue, Saturation, Lightness only
- Hue—Drag on the hue slider to set the hue, drag in the box to set the saturation and lightness.
- Saturation—Drag on the saturation slider to set the saturation, drag in the box to set the hue and lightness.
- Lightness—Drag on the lightness slider to set the lightness, drag in the box to set the saturation and hue.
- Tint
- Drag the slider to the left or right to increase or decrease the color tint, respectively.
Using the Color Picker
The picker lets you sample colors within or outside Affinity Photo, then use them in your design.
![Color Picker](https://cdn.statically.io/img/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/affinity-docs/help/photo/shared/ui/clrpicker.png)
Saving chosen colors for later use
Once your color has been chosen and applied to a tool or content, there are several ways to preserve this color for later use.
The following options are available from the Panel Preferences menu.
- Copy Color to Clipboard as Hex—this calculates the current color's Hex value and adds it to the clipboard. This is useful for web developers, to standardize on colors between graphics and HTML coding in a web environment.
- Add Color to Swatch—adds the current color to the currently loaded palette in the Swatches panel.
- Add Chord to Swatch pop-up menu—adds a chord of the current color to the currently loaded palette in the Swatches panel.
SEE ALSO:
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