How to get the name (Like: Red or Blue) of a color from a color dialog?

Question

I have a problem with getting the name of a color from a colordialog box in C#. I now have the following code to accomplish this:

  private void bPickColor_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        ColorDialog colorDlg = new ColorDialog();
        colorDlg.AllowFullOpen = false;
        colorDlg.AnyColor = true;
        colorDlg.SolidColorOnly = false;
        colorDlg.Color = Color.Red;

        if (colorDlg.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
        {
            //ColorConverter conv = new ColorConverter();
            Color c = colorDlg.Color;
            //string s = conv.ConvertToString(c);
            //string h = Conversion.Hex(s.ToArgb);
            _ColorName = c.Name.ToString();
            MessageBox.Show(_ColorName);
            bPickColor.BackColor = colorDlg.Color;
        }
    }

As you can see I use 'C.Name.ToString' to get the color name, but somehow this gives back the color code like for example: f0018000. What I need is the name of the color like for example: RED, or BLUE.

The reason I need this is because I store the colors in a datatable and read them using this code:

Color.FromName((string)dtrow["color"]);

So what I've tried so far is to search for code that can get the color name based on the color code, but the pieces of code I found didn't work.

Now I also tried to make a dictionary of all color codes with the corresponding color names, but I couldn't make this to work either.

Does anybody has a solution for this problem? How can I get the name (Blue, Red) of the color?

possible duplicate of [How to get Color from Hexadecimal color code using .NET?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2109756/how-to-get-color-from-hexadecimal-color-code-using-net) — Alex Neves, Jul 29 '15 at 09:25
How could you possibly get a Name string for every color someone might select in a colorpicker? They are too many to have a name each... thats why there is the hexadecimal values... (i guess) :) — cnom, Jul 29 '15 at 09:30
possible duplicate of [convert hex code to color name](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7791710/convert-hex-code-to-color-name) — , Jul 29 '15 at 09:31
Yeah but I don't need a color based on the color code but the color name. The answers mentioned in the question above doesn't solve my problem. — user3176938, Jul 29 '15 at 09:32

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 29 '15 at 09:38

2

Try this

   _ColorName = c.Name.ToString();
    Color myColor = ColorTranslator.FromHtml(_ColorName);
    MessageBox.Show(myColor.Name);

answered Jul 29 '15 at 09:38

too_cool

1,164
8
24

I already tried this, but this doesn't work. You still get the color code this way. – user3176938 Jul 29 '15 at 09:40
Yeah Indeed for some colors it does seem to work. You are right. – user3176938 Jul 29 '15 at 09:55

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

I have found the solution. I have used this piece of code (system.Linq is needed to make this piece of code work) that I found here: convert hex code to color name :

string GetColorName(Color color)
    {
        var colorProperties = typeof(Color)
            .GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static)
            .Where(p => p.PropertyType == typeof(Color));
        foreach (var colorProperty in colorProperties)
        {
            var colorPropertyValue = (Color)colorProperty.GetValue(null, null);
            if (colorPropertyValue.R == color.R
                   && colorPropertyValue.G == color.G
                   && colorPropertyValue.B == color.B)
            {
                return colorPropertyValue.Name;
            }
        }

        //If unknown color, fallback to the hex value
        //(or you could return null, "Unkown" or whatever you want)
        return ColorTranslator.ToHtml(color);
    }

In the colordialog picker I now use this code:

 private void bPickColor_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        ColorDialog colorDlg = new ColorDialog();

        colorDlg.AllowFullOpen = false;
        colorDlg.AnyColor = true;

        colorDlg.SolidColorOnly = false;

        colorDlg.Color = Color.Red;



        if (colorDlg.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
        {


            Color c = colorDlg.Color;

            _ColorName = GetColorName(c);
            MessageBox.Show(_ColorName);

            bPickColor.BackColor = colorDlg.Color;

        }
    }

This way it works perfectly. Although I indeed don't know if all colors have a corresponding name but well I can handle that in the code anyway. Thanks for all the answers!

The hex code ('f0018000' in your example) represents a 32 bit number, giving a possibility of 4294967296 different colors - so obviously there are not names for all of them. If the precise color is required, you will need to store the hex code. — PaulF, Jul 29 '15 at 09:46
One comment: somehow this doesn't work very well because the colors are not all translated to a name. Does anybody know how I can make a dictionary with all the color codes as key and the color names as value? Such a dictionary could solve this problem. — user3176938, Jul 29 '15 at 09:48
Not all colors have a name - as I stated above there are 4294967296 possible hex codes, there are not that many variations on color names. — PaulF, Jul 29 '15 at 12:09

cnom · Answer 3 · 2015-07-29T10:19:15.417

0

Check this out: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa358802.aspx

These are the possible color names. So make a selection among these if you MUST have a colorname stored! ;-)

Here is an example of how to make the dictionary you need:

Dictionary<string, string> colors =
    new Dictionary<string, string>();

colors.Add("0x000001", "red");
colors.Add("0x000002", "green");
colors.Add("0x000003", "blue");
colors.Add("0x000004", "black");

edited Jul 29 '15 at 10:19

answered Jul 29 '15 at 09:51

cnom

3,071
4
30
60

Thanks. I need this in a dictionary (with the color code as key and the color name as value). Anybody has an idea on how to accomplish this? – user3176938 Jul 29 '15 at 09:53
I updated the answer with a dictionary example for colors – cnom Jul 29 '15 at 10:21

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 29 '15 at 10:08

I now solve the problems mentioned above (that not all the colors have a name) like this:

string GetColorName(Color color)
    {
        var colorProperties = typeof(Color)
            .GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static)
            .Where(p => p.PropertyType == typeof(Color));
        foreach (var colorProperty in colorProperties)
        {
            var colorPropertyValue = (Color)colorProperty.GetValue(null, null);
            if (colorPropertyValue.R == color.R
                   && colorPropertyValue.G == color.G
                   && colorPropertyValue.B == color.B)
            {
                return colorPropertyValue.Name;
                //colorPropertyValue.ToArgb();

            }
        }

        //If unknown color, fallback to the hex value
        //(or you could return null, "Unkown" or whatever you want)

        MessageBox.Show(" This color is not supported yet");
        //return ColorTranslator.ToHtml(color);
        return "Red";

    }

So if a color doesn't have a name I return 'red' and give a message that the color is not supported yet.

How to get the name (Like: Red or Blue) of a color from a color dialog?

4 Answers4