A couple of weeks ago, a reader of this website requested ^[1] an article about color-selection components. So Ed – this one’s for you 🙂
Matlab includes a fully-documented uisetcolor function to enable color selection. uisetcolor uses a modal dialog window for this. To integrate this color-selection dialog in our GUI, simply add a uicontrol button or a menu item that call uisetcolor in their callback function.
An example of such an integrated control can be found in the uisetlineprops ^[2] utility on the File Exchange, which I introduced earlier this month in my article on using a borderless button for setting plot properties ^[3]:

Swing’s JColorChooser

We start with Swing’s standard JColorChooser ^[4]. This can easily be used in Matlab, just as any other Swing component. It can be added to our GUI using the built-in javacomponent function ^[5]:

>> cc = javax.swing.JColorChooser;
>> [jColorChooser,container] = javacomponent(cc,[1,1,450,325],gcf);
>> jColorChooser.getColor
ans =
java.awt.Color[r=102,g=153,b=255]

Matlab ColorPicker components

com.mathworks.beans.editors.ColorPicker is an alternative component provided by Matlab:

>> cp = com.mathworks.beans.editors.ColorPicker;
>> [jColorPicker,container] = javacomponent(cp,[1,1,400,200],gcf);

options = 0;  icon = 0;
cp = com.mathworks.mlwidgets.graphics.ColorPicker(options,icon,'');
[jColorPicker,hContainer] = javacomponent(cp,[10,220,30,20],gcf);

 

JIDE’s ColorComboBox

JIDE’s com.jidesoft.combobox.ColorComboBox is very similar to ColorPicker. Despite its name and appearance as a combo-box, it actually extends the basic JComponent, not JComboBox. It includes three separately-customizable sub-components: a color label, the color values, and the drop-down arrow button. All are shown by default (the color values may be hidden if the control is set too narrow):

…and a few others

There are a few other color-selection controls. I won’t go into details here, but here are a couple of pointers to get you started:

• com.mathworks.mwswing.MJColorComboBox is a simple extension of the standard Swing JComboBox that presents a color-selection drop-down control. Unfortunately, this control only works on Matlab releases up to 7.10 (R2010a) – it was removed in 7.11 (R2010b):
  

  

• com.mathworks.mlwidgets.graphics.ColorDialog is the control used by Matlab for color selection in Matlab’s property inspector for Matlab handle objects. It can be displayed as either a modal dialog window or an embedded panel component:
  

  

• com.mathworks.hg.util.dColorChooser is another control, which presents a panel grid of selectable colors:
  

  

Some final notes

It is fortunate to have such a wide selection of available components, although it is a pity that they are not fully documented and supported. Of course, there are many other 3rd-party color-selection components available, and these can also be integrated in your GUI – today I have only briefly discussed a few relevant built-in components.
Color-selection controls can also be embedded as sub-components in other GUI controls. For example, color-selection cells within data tables:

A more detailed report

I have prepared a 20-page PDF report about using color-selection components in Matlab, which greatly expands on the above. This report is available for $19 here ^[6] (please allow up to 48 hours for email delivery).

12 Comments To "Color selection components"

#1 Comment By Ed Ross On June 3, 2011 @ 11:46

#2 Comment By dhruv jain On June 16, 2011 @ 07:34

#3 Comment By Jesse dziedzic On October 20, 2011 @ 08:47

#4 Comment By Red Kim On May 13, 2012 @ 23:29

#5 Comment By Yair Altman On May 13, 2012 @ 23:46

import com.mathworks.mlwidgets.graphics.ColorPicker
cp = ColorPicker(ColorPicker.AUTO, ColorPicker.LINE_ICON, '');
[jcp,hcontainer] = javacomponent(cp,[],gcf);
color = cp.getValue;  % a java.awt.Color object
color = cp.getValue.getColorComponents([])' * 255;   % an [R,G,B] array of values

#6 Comment By Red Kim On May 14, 2012 @ 03:50

#7 Comment By Ronin On July 1, 2014 @ 02:14

#8 Comment By Yair Altman On July 2, 2014 @ 09:51

#9 Comment By Paul On October 13, 2015 @ 04:48

#10 Comment By Yair Altman On October 13, 2015 @ 12:58

#11 Comment By Meade On February 22, 2017 @ 18:14

import com.mathworks.mlwidgets.graphics.ColorPicker
cp = ColorPicker(ColorPicker.AUTO, ColorPicker.LINE_ICON, '');
[jcp,hcontainer] = javacomponent(cp,[],gcf);   % Need to trigger callback on selection here!

% function MyCallback(hObj,evt)
color = cp.getValue;  % a java.awt.Color object % This should be within the callback
color = cp.getValue.getColorComponents([])' * 255;   % an [R,G,B] array of values
% Do something with the color
% end %MyCallback

#12 Comment By meade On March 3, 2017 @ 21:28

 import com.mathworks.mlwidgets.graphics.ColorPicker
 cp = ColorPicker(ColorPicker.AUTO, ColorPicker.LINE_ICON, '');
 [jcp,hcontainer] = javacomponent(cp,[],gcf);
 
 % !! Here's the key bit... This will trigger when user picks a color & selects "OK" in widget
 set(jcp, 'ItemStateChangedCallback', {@MyCallback,gcf})


 function MyCallback(hObj,evt,hFigure)
      color = cp.getValue;  % a java.awt.Color object % This should be within the callback
      color = cp.getValue.getColorComponents([])' * 255;   % an [R,G,B] array of values
      % Do something with the color
 end %MyCallback