# Colour

> Choosing colours in CrowDraw: the Disc, Classic, Harmony and Value pickers, palettes (including a palette from a photo and .swatches files), recent colours, the secondary colour, picking colour from the canvas and ColorDrop fill.

Source: https://crow.sg/apps/crowdraw/docs/colour/

Tap the colour circle in the top bar to open **Colours**. Pick by eye, by harmony or by the numbers, keep palettes, and drop colour straight onto the canvas to fill a shape.

## The Colours panel

The header of the panel always shows:

- the hex code of the current colour, such as `#5C4AFA`;
- the previous and the current colour side by side. Tap the previous one to go back to the colour you had when you opened the panel;
- the **secondary colour**, white to begin with. Tap it to swap it with the current colour, for flicking between two colours as you paint.

![The Colours panel on the Disc tab, with the default palette and recent colours under it](https://crow.sg/apps/crowdraw/screens/05-colours.webp "The Disc, with your default palette and recent colours")

The panel has five tabs and remembers the one you used last:

| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| Disc | A hue ring around a saturation and brightness disc. Double-tap to snap to the nearest hue or point on the disc. |
| Classic | A saturation and brightness square, with Hue, Saturation and Brightness sliders. |
| Harmony | A colour wheel that suggests matching colours: Complementary, Split complementary, Analogous, Triadic or Tetradic, with a Brightness slider. Tap a suggested swatch to use it. |
| Value | Exact numbers: Hue (°), Saturation and Brightness (%), Red, Green and Blue (0–255), and a Hex field. Tap a number to type it. |
| Palettes | Your palettes. See below. |

Under the Disc, Classic, Harmony and Value pickers are two strips: your default palette and **Recent**, the last 20 colours you used. Touch and hold a recent colour to add it to your default palette.

## Palettes

CrowDraw comes with eight palettes: Crow Iridescent (the default), Skin Tones, Earth, Pastel, Vivid, Greys, Sunset and Ocean. Each palette holds 30 colours.

- Tap a swatch to use its colour.
- Tap an empty slot to store the current colour there.
- Touch and hold a swatch for **Set to current colour** or **Delete swatch**.
- The **…** menu on a palette has **Set as default** (the default palette is the one shown under the other pickers), **Rename**, **Duplicate**, **Move up** and **Move down**, **Export .swatches** and **Delete palette**.

### New palettes

- **New palette** (**+**) makes an empty "Untitled Palette".
- **New palette from photo** lets you pick a photo and makes a 15-colour "Photo Palette" from it.
- **Import swatches file** imports one or more `.swatches` files, the palette format Procreate uses, so palettes you already have come straight across.

## Picking a colour from the canvas

There are four ways to sample a colour from your artwork:

- **Touch and hold** the canvas with a finger. You can change the delay or turn this off in Preferences.
- Tap the square **modify button** in the sidebar, then touch the canvas. Or hold the button while you touch.
- **Eyedropper** in the quick menu.
- Set Apple Pencil's double-tap or squeeze to **Eyedropper** (see [Apple Pencil & preferences](https://crow.sg/apps/crowdraw/docs/apple-pencil/)).

## ColorDrop fill

Drag the colour circle from the top bar and drop it inside a shape on the canvas: the area fills with the current colour on the active layer, up to the lines around it.

To control how far the fill spreads, hold still for a moment before you let go. The fill previews, and sliding left or right changes the **ColorDrop threshold**. Lift to fill.

After a fill, a **Continue filling** button appears for a few seconds. Tap it to fill more areas with a tap each, with a **Threshold** control, a choice between sampling the **Layer** or the whole **Canvas**, and **Done**. Fills respect the selection and alpha lock.

To fill on a separate layer under your line art, set the line art layer to **Reference** in its layer options. ColorDrop and automatic selection then follow the reference layer's lines while filling the layer you are on.

> [!TIP]
> Small gaps in line art let the fill leak out. Close them, or lower the threshold by sliding left before you lift.

To fill a whole layer, use **Fill layer** in its layer options; to fill a selection, use **Colour fill** in Selection.