Working with Colors

Open the shared Colors pane with View ‣ Colors. The pane has two compact pages:

  • PALETTES contains the existing palette selector, palette commands, and reusable swatches. See Working with Color Palettes.

  • COLORS is a fast picker for defining and applying solid fill and stroke colors.

The Colors page showing the color field, Hue strip, HEX value, Recent colors, and Select controls

The defined color

The COLORS page owns one independent defined color. The Saturation/Value field, Hue strip, value editors, and large swatch on the Select: row all represent that same color.

The defined color does not follow the selected drawing element. Selecting another element, switching documents, changing a color elsewhere, or using Undo and Redo does not replace it.

Choosing a color

Use the large two-dimensional field to choose saturation from left to right and value (brightness) from top to bottom. Use the vertical strip to choose Hue.

  • A single left- or right-click, or a drag, changes only the defined color.

  • A double-left-click chooses the position and applies the resulting color to Fill.

  • A double-right-click chooses the position and applies the resulting color to Stroke.

  • When the Hue strip has keyboard focus, Up decreases Hue by one degree and Down increases it by one degree. Hue wraps at the ends.

Choose HEX, RGB, or HSL in the value-mode list to edit the same defined color in a different notation. Changing modes does not change the color. Entering a value selects the existing text when the field first receives focus, so you can type a replacement immediately. The picker uses solid sRGB colors and does not edit alpha.

Applying colors

The color controls use a consistent mouse-button convention:

  • Left-click applies a color to Fill.

  • Right-click applies a color to Stroke.

On the Select: row:

  • The large colored area applies the defined color. It is the only control that adds a missing color to Recent: or promotes an existing one.

  • White and Black apply those quick colors without changing the defined color or Recent list.

  • [C] applies the SVG currentColor paint value without changing the defined color or Recent list.

  • None applies no paint to Fill or Stroke without changing the defined color or Recent list.

Each Recent swatch applies its displayed solid color. Clicking one does not load it into the defined color and does not reorder the Recent list.

The Control Bar Fill and Stroke menus remain available. See Working with Elements for those controls and other color choices.