MATLAB Function Reference

ColorSpec - Color specification

Description

ColorSpec is not a function; it refers to the three ways in which you specify color for MATLAB^® graphics:

• RGB triple

• Short name

• Long name

The short names and long names are MATLAB strings that specify one of eight predefined colors. The RGB triple is a three-element row vector whose elements specify the intensities of the red, green, and blue components of the color; the intensities must be in the range [0 1]. The following table lists the predefined colors and their RGB equivalents.

Remarks

The eight predefined colors and any colors you specify as RGB values are not part of a figure's colormap, nor are they affected by changes to the figure's colormap. They are referred to as fixed colors, as opposed to colormap colors.

Some high-level functions (for example, scatter) accept a colorspec as an input argument and use it to set the CData of graphic objects they create. When using such functions, take care not to specify a colorspec in a property/value pair that sets CData; values for CData are always n-length vectors or n-by-3 matrices, where n is the length of XData and YData, never strings.

Examples

To change the background color of a figure to green, specify the color with a short name, a long name, or an RGB triple. These statements generate equivalent results:

whitebg('g')
whitebg('green')
whitebg([0 1 0]);

You can use ColorSpec anywhere you need to define a color. For example, this statement changes the figure background color to pink:

set(gcf,'Color',[1,0.4,0.6])

See Also

bar, bar3, colordef, colormap, fill, fill3, whitebg

Color Operations for related functions

colormapeditor

colperm