Color swatches
The Color swatches panel provides an interface to manage color palettes and select colors from the palettes:
To switch between color palettes, select the desired color palette from the drop-down box at the top. The following three default color palettes are listed in the drop-down box:
- Recent colors: This contains the colors that have been selected the most recently in the color picker. This palette cannot be modified.
- Standard colors: This contains the colors that are always available as quick selections in QGIS.
- Project colors: This contains the colors that are stored within the QGIS project file.
The three default color palettes can be quickly accessed by clicking on the down arrow next to a color display, as shown in the following screenshot:
The options drop-down button to the right of the Recent colors provides several handy functions to manage palettes. Let's review each one:
- Copy Colors: This copies the selected color(s) in the current palette to the clipboard.
- Paste Colors: This pastes the color(s) stored in the clipboard to the current palette.
- Import Colors: This imports colors from a GIMP Palette (GPL) file and places them into the current palette.
A GPL file is a text file that stores color palette information. The GPL file format is from the free and open source GIMP image editor project. More information about GIMP can be found here: http://www.gimp.org.
- Export Colors: This exports the current palette to a GPL palette file.
- New Palette: This creates a new, empty palette that you can name. The palette will persist in the color picker until it is removed.
- Import Palette: This imports a GPL palette file into the list of palettes. The palette will persist in the color picker until it is removed.
- Remove Palette: This removes the current palette from the list. Note that the three default palettes cannot be removed.