ColorSpec (MATLAB Function Reference)

Color specification

Description

ColorSpec is not a command; it refers to the three ways in which you specify color in MATLAB:

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.

RGB Value
Short Name
Long Name

[1 1 0]
y
yellow

[1 0 1]
m
magenta

[0 1 1]
c
cyan

[1 0 0]
r
red

[0 1 0]
g
green

[0 0 1]
b
blue

[1 1 1]
w
white

[0 0 0]
k
black

RGB Value	Short Name	Long Name
`[1 1 0]`	`y`	`yellow`
`[1 0 1]`	`m`	`magenta`
`[0 1 1]`	`c`	`cyan`
`[1 0 0]`	`r`	`red`
`[0 1 0]`	`g`	`green`
`[0 0 1]`	`b`	`blue`
`[1 1 1]`	`w`	`white`
`[0 0 0]`	`k`	`black`

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.

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

colormap colperm