The Colour panel is used to choose colour for various tools and selected objects.
The Colour panel can operate in several colour modes—HSL, RGB, RGB Hex, CMYK and LAB—and has various ways of defining colour—colour wheel (HSL only), colour boxes and colour sliders. Colour tints can also be applied from within the panel.
Like the Swatches panel, the Colour panel takes on different appearances depending on the active Persona and on the selected tool. The large colour selectors indicate the currently selected colours.
The active colour selector is shown at the front of the two colour selectors. Choosing a new colour will apply it to the active colour selector.
With the Colour panel, colours can be applied to an object or for use by a tool in just a few clicks. Opacity and noise are further colour attributes which can be applied.
When choosing colours in the Colour panel, you can choose from various selection preferences and colour model values. The colour selection preferences are changed in the Panel Preferences menu.
Depending on the colour model selected, you can also choose to work in 8 bit, 16 bit or Percentage mode.
Some of the selection methods allow you to set colour using values other than RGB. This doesn't change the working colour profile of the document, but changes the input values for the colours.
The following colour selection preferences are available from the Panel Preferences menu.
The HSL colour wheel's Saturation/Lightness control can be changed from Triangle to Square via the Panel Preferences menu.
By default, the colour space is locked when using Sliders (e.g., CMYK sliders) to prevent it from changing. This avoids inadvertently swapping to another mode after using swatches or selecting a different object created with a different colour mode. When unlocked, the Colour panel will remember the colour mode that the selected object was created in.
The picker lets you sample colours within or outside Affinity Publisher, then use them in your design.
Once your colour has been chosen and applied to a tool or object, there are several ways to preserve this colour for later use.
The following options are available from the Panel Preferences menu.