LaTeX/Colors

Adding colors to your text is supported by the xcolor package (supersedes package color). Using this package, you can set the font color, text background, or page background. You can choose from predefined colors or define your own colors using RGB, Hex, or CMYK. Mathematical formulas can also be colored.

Adding the xcolor package

To make use of these features, the xcolor package must be imported. xcolor starts from the basic facilities of the color package and extends it.

\usepackage{xcolor}

The package allows you to use the names of 19 base colors (black, white, blue, green, yellow, red etc.); these names are always available. Besides, the package has some options to get more predefined colors, which should be added globally. dvipsnames allows you to access more than 60 colors, and svgnames allows access to about 150 colors. If you need more color names, then you may also want to look at the x11names option that offers more than 300 colors.

The table option allows colors to be added to tables.

Entering colored text

The simplest way to type colored text is by:

\textcolor{declared-color}{text}

where declared-color is a color that, if necessary, was previously defined by \definecolor.

Another possible way by

{\color{declared-color}some text}

that will switch the standard text color to the color you want. It will work until the end of the current TeX group. For example:

\emph{some black text, {\color{red}followed by a red fragment}}, going black again.

The difference between \textcolor and \color is the same as that between \texttt and \ttfamily, you can use the one you prefer. The \color environment allows the text to run over multiple lines and other text environments whereas the text in \textcolor must all be one paragraph and not contain other environments.

You can change the background color of the whole page by:

\pagecolor{declared-color}

Entering colored background for the text

\colorbox{declared-color}{text}

If the background color and the text color is changed, then:

\colorbox{declared-color1}{\color{declared-color2}text}

There is also \fcolorbox to make framed background color in yet another color:

\fcolorbox{declared-color-frame}{declared-color-background}{text}

Predefined colors

The predefined color names are

black, blue, brown, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, lightgray, lime, magenta, olive, orange, pink, purple, red, teal, violet, white, yellow.

There may be other pre-defined colors on your system, but these should be available on all systems.

If you would like a color not pre-defined, you can use one of the 68 dvips colors, or define your own. These options are discussed in the following sections

The 68 standard colors known to dvips

Invoke the package with the usenames and dvipsnames option. If you are using tikz or pstricks package you must declare the xcolor package before that, otherwise it will not work.

\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}

This above syntax may result in an error if you are using beamer with tikz. To go around it, include usenames and dvipsnames options when defining the document class.

\documentclass[usenames,dvipsnames]{beamer}

Be wary that the below color names are case-sensitive. For example, \color{olivegreen} raises an "undefined color" error, but \color{OliveGreen} works fine. Table can be sorted by color name, by hue, by saturation, or by lightness.

Name	Color	Hex	Hue	Saturation	Lightness
Apricot		FBB982	27.3	239.2	190.5
Aquamarine		00B5BE	182.8	255.0	95.0
Bittersweet		C04F17	19.9	200.4	107.5
Black		221E1F	0.3	15.9	32.0
Blue		2D2F92	238.2	134.8	95.5
BlueGreen		00B3B8	181.6	255.0	92.0
BlueViolet		473992	249.4	111.8	101.5
BrickRed		B6321C	8.6	187.0	105.0
Brown		792500	18.3	255.0	60.5
BurntOrange		F7921D	32.2	237.6	138.0
CadetBlue		74729A	243.0	42.1	134.0
CarnationPink		F282B4	333.2	207.0	186.0
Cerulean		00A2E3	197.2	255.0	113.5
CornflowerBlue		41B0E4	199.1	191.5	146.5
Cyan		00AEEF	196.3	255.0	119.5
Dandelion		FDBC42	39.1	249.7	159.5
DarkOrchid		A4538A	319.3	83.6	123.5
Emerald		00A99D	175.7	255.0	84.5
ForestGreen		009B55	152.9	255.0	77.5
Fuchsia		8C368C	300.0	113.0	97.0
Goldenrod		FFDF42	49.8	255.0	160.5
Gray		949698	0.2	4.9	150.0
Green		00A64F	148.6	255.0	83.0
GreenYellow		DFE674	63.7	177.3	173.0
JungleGreen		00A99A	174.7	255.0	84.5
Lavender		F49EC4	333.5	203.1	201.0
LimeGreen		8DC73E	85.4	140.3	130.5
Magenta		EC008C	324.4	255.0	118.0
Mahogany		A9341F	9.1	176.0	100.0
Maroon		AF3235	358.6	141.7	112.5
Melon		F89E7B	16.8	229.3	185.5
MidnightBlue		006795	198.5	255.0	74.5
Mulberry		A93C93	312.1	121.4	114.5
NavyBlue		006EB8	204.1	255.0	92.0
OliveGreen		3C8031	111.6	113.8	88.5
Orange		F58137	23.4	230.7	150.0
OrangeRed		ED135A	340.5	218.9	128.0
Orchid		AF72B0	299.0	71.9	145.0
Peach		F7965A	22.9	231.4	168.5
Periwinkle		7977B8	241.8	80.1	151.5
PineGreen		008B72	169.2	255.0	69.5
Plum		92268F	301.7	149.7	92.0
ProcessBlue		00B0F0	196.0	255.0	120
Purple		99479B	298.6	94.8	113.0
RawSienna		974006	24.0	235.5	78.5
Red		ED1B23	357.7	217.7	132.0
RedOrange		F26035	13.7	224.2	147.5
RedViolet		A1246B	325.9	161.8	98.5
Rhodamine		EF559F	331.2	211.1	162.0
RoyalBlue		0071BC	203.9	255.0	94.0
RoyalPurple		613F99	262.7	106.3	108.0
RubineRed		ED017D	328.5	252.9	119.0
Salmon		F69289	5.0	218.9	191.5
SeaGreen		3FBC9D	165.1	127.0	125.5
Sepia		671800	14.0	255.0	51.5
SkyBlue		46C5DD	189.5	175.8	145.5
SpringGreen		C6DC67	71.3	159.5	161.5
Tan		DA9D76	23.4	146.6	168.0
TealBlue		00AEB3	181.7	255.0	89.5
Thistle		D883B7	323.3	133.0	173.5
Turquoise		00B4CE	187.6	255.0	103.0
Violet		58429B	254.8	102.7	110.5
VioletRed		EF58A0	331.4	210.4	163.5
White		FFFFFF	0.1	0.0	255.0
WildStrawberry		EE2967	341.1	217.5	139.5
Yellow		FFF200	56.9	255.0	127.5
YellowGreen		98CC70	93.9	120.9	158.0
YellowOrange		FAA21A	36.4	244.1	138.0

Defining new colors

If the predefined colors are not adequate, you may wish to define your own.

Place

Define the colors in the preamble of your document. (Reason: do so in the preamble, so that you can already refer to them in the preamble, which is useful, for instance, in an argument of another package that supports colors as arguments, such as the listings package.)

Method

You need to include the xcolor package in your preamble to define new colors. In the abstract, the colors are defined following this scheme:

\definecolor{name}{model}{color-spec}

where:

• name is the name of the color; you can call it as you like
• model is the way you describe the color, and is one of gray, rgb, RGB, HTML, and cmyk.
• color-spec is the description of the color

Color Models

Among the models you can use to describe the color are the following (several more are described in the xcolor manual):

Color Models

Model	Description	Color Specification	Example
gray	Shades of gray (0-1)	Just one number between 0 (black) and 1 (white), so 0.95 will be very light gray, 0.30 will be dark gray.	\definecolor{light-gray}{gray}{0.95}
rgb	Red, Green, Blue (0-1)	Three numbers given in the form red,green,blue; the quantity of each color is represented with a number between 0 and 1.	\definecolor{orange}{rgb}{1,0.5,0}
RGB	Red, Green, Blue (0-255)	Three numbers given in the form red,green,blue; the quantity of each color is represented with a number between 0 and 255.	\definecolor{orange}{RGB}{255,127,0}
HTML	Red, Green, Blue (00-FF)	Six hexadecimal numbers given in the form RRGGBB; similar to what is used in HTML.	\definecolor{orange}{HTML}{FF7F00}
cmyk	Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (0-1)	Four numbers given in the form cyan,magenta,yellow,black; the quantity of each color is represented with a number between 0 and 1.	\definecolor{orange}{cmyk}{0,0.5,1,0}

Examples

To define a new color, follow the following example, which defines orange for you, by setting the red to the maximum, the green to one half (0.5), and the blue to the minimum:

\definecolor{orange}{rgb}{1,0.5,0}

The following code should give a similar results to the last code chunk.

\definecolor{orange}{RGB}{255,127,0}

If you loaded the xcolor package, you can define colors upon previously defined ones.

The first specifies 20 percent blue and 80 percent white; the second is a mixture of 20 percent blue and 80 percent black; and the last one is a mixture of (20*0.3) percent blue, ((100-20)*0.3) percent black and (100-30) percent green.

\color{blue!20} \color{blue!20!black} \color{blue!20!black!30!green}

xcolor also features a handy command to define colors from color mixes:

\colorlet{notgreen}{blue!50!yellow}

Using color specifications directly

Normally one would predeclare all the colors as above, but sometimes it is convenient to directly use a color without naming it first. To achieve this, \color and \textcolor have an alternative syntax specifying the model in square brackets, and the color specification in curly braces. For example:

{\color[rgb]{1,0,0} This text will appear red-colored} \textcolor[rgb]{0,1,0}{This text will appear green-colored}

Creating / Capturing colors

You may want to use colors that appear on another document, web pages, pictures, etc. Alternatively, you may want to play around with rgb values to create your own custom colors.

Image processing suites like the free GIMP suite for Linux/Windows/Mac offer color picker facilities to capture any color on your screen or synthesize colors directly from their respective rgb / hsv / hexadecimal values.

Smaller, free utilities also exist:

• Linux/BSD: The gcolor2 tool (usually also available in repositories)
• Linux/BSD: in newer systems you may want to use gcolor3 tool (usually also available in repositories)
• Microsoft Windows: The open-source Color Selector tool.
• Apple Macs: Hex Color Picker for creating custom colors and the built-in DigitalColor Meter for capturing colors on screen.
• Online utilities: See here for a Wikipedia article with several external links

Spot colors

Spot colors are customary in printing. They usually refer to pre-mixed inks based on a swatchbook (like Pantone, TruMatch or Toyo). The package colorspace extends xcolor to provide real spot colors (CMYK and CIELAB). They are defined with, say:

\definespotcolor{mygreen}{PANTONE 7716 C}{.83, 0, .40, .11}

Sources

• The xcolor manual
• The color package documentation