About

A collection of various WPF controls used to select colors. Supports .NET Framework 4.5.1+, .NET Core 3.1+, .NET 5 and .NET 6. Originally developed for PixiEditor.

1. Included Controls
2. Example Usage
3. Properties
4. Styling
5. Other

Included Controls

• SquarePicker: A HSV/HSL Color Picker, consists of a circular hue slider and HV/HL square.
• ColorSliders: A set of HSV/RGB + Alpha sliders
• HexColorTextBox: An RGBA Hex text field
• ColorDisplay: A Primary/Secondary Color display with a swap button
• StandardColorPicker: Combines everything listed above in one control
• PortableColorPicker: A collapsible version of StandardColorPicker
• AlphaSlider: A separate alpha slider control

Example Usage

See ColorPickerDemo for an example project.

Basic usage:

Install the NuGet package, insert a reference to the ColorPicker namespace

<Window ...
xmlns:colorpicker="clr-namespace:ColorPicker;assembly=ColorPicker"
...>

Add the controls

<colorpicker:StandardColorPicker x:Name="main" Width="200" Height="380"/>
<colorpicker:PortableColorPicker ColorState="{Binding ElementName=main, Path=ColorState, Mode=TwoWay}" Width="40" Height="40"/>

Note: in some configurations such as using the package in .NET Framework 4.7 the XAML designer tends to break and not show the control.

Properties

All controls share these properties:

• SelectedColor dependency property stores the current color as System.Windows.Media.Color
• ColorChanged: An event that fires on SelectedColor change.
• ColorState dependency property contains all info about the current state of the control. Use this property to bind controls together.
• Color property contains nested properties you may bind to or use to retrieve the color in code-behind:
  • Color.A: Current Alpha, a double ranging from 0 to 255
  • Color.RGB_R, Color.RGB_G, Color.RGB_B: Dimensions of the RGB color space, each is a 0-255 double
  • Color.HSV_H: Hue in the HSV color space, a 0-360 double
  • Color.HSV_S: Saturation in the HSV color space, a 0-100 double
  • Color.HSV_V: Value in the HSV color space, a 0-100 double
  • Color.HSL_H: Hue in the HSL color space, a 0-360 double
  • Color.HSL_S: Saturation in the HSL color space, a 0-100 double
  • Color.HSL_L: Lightness in the HSL color space, a 0-100 double

Apart from those, some controls have unique properties:

• SecondColorState, SecondColor, and SecondaryColor are functionally identical to ColorState, Color, and SelectedColor respectively. These are present on controls that have a secondary color.
• HintColorState, HintNotifyableColor, and HintColor are functionally identical to ColorState, Color, and SelectedColor respectively. These are present on controls that have a hint color. The hint color is a color field that can be used to obtain the primary color from an external source when the user clicks a button.
• UseHintColor enables the hint color or disables it (disabled by default).
• SmallChange lets you change SmallChange of sliders, which is used as sensitivity for when the user turns the scroll wheel with the cursor over the sliders. Present on controls with sliders.
• ShowAlpha lets you hide the alpha channel on various controls. Present on all controls containing either an alpha slider (apart from the AlphaSlider control itself) or a hex color textbox.
• PickerType: HSV or HSL, present on SquarePicker or controls that contain SquarePicker.

Styling

Out of the box, the color picker uses the default WPF look:

You may use the included PixiEditor's dark theme by loading a resource dictionary in XAML:

<Window.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/ColorPicker;component/Styles/DefaultColorPickerStyle.xaml" />
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Window.Resources>

and referencing DefaultColorPickerStyle in the style attribute of a control:

<colorpicker:StandardColorPicker Style="{StaticResource DefaultColorPickerStyle}" />

As an alternative, the same can be achieved programmatically:

var resourceDictionary = new ResourceDictionary();
resourceDictionary.Source = new System.Uri(
    "pack://application:,,,/ColorPicker;component/Styles/DefaultColorPickerStyle.xaml",
    System.UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute);

StandardColorPicker picker = new StandardColorPicker()
{
    Style = (Style)resourceDictionary["DefaultColorPickerStyle"]
};

You may define your own styles, see DefaultColorPickerStyle for reference.

Other

Read flabbet's article on the theory behind the first version of this project on dev.to