MATLAB comes with very few named colors. Although any color that you can figure out the RGB (red-green-blue) color values for can be used, it’s not always convenient to figure these out. For example,
>> x = linspace(0, 5, 101); >> plot(x, sin(x), 'Color', [1,0.65,0])
plots a sine curve with an orange color. An alternative using the function html2rgb() is to use the following command.
>> plot(x, sin(s), 'Color', html2rgb('Orange'))
This version of the code is somewhat longer, but easier to remember and much easier to read. In addition, wherever colors can be specified in set_plot commands, they can always be given as names or RGB codes. For example, the colormap can be changed to an indigo-themed monochrome map using the following command.
>> contourf(peaks(50)) >> set_colormap({'w', 'Indigo', 'k'})
See set_colormap() for more information about that command.
This example demonstrates the usual output of html2rgb().
>> html2rgb('DodgerBlue') ans = 0.1176 0.5647 1.0000
Shorter names are also available.
>> html2rgb('y') ans = 1 1 0 >> html2rgb('yellow') ans = 1 1 0
Because valid RGB color codes are returned when input, the function can safely be nested.
>> html2rgb(html2rgb('Coral')) ans = 1.0000 0.4980 0.3137
A single number as input is taken as grayscale.
>> html2rgb(0.3) ans = 0.3000 0.3000 0.3000