Palette

Simple colour palette in linear or grid layouts
by Martin Fitzpatrick Last updated Python GUI Widget Library
Palette Source Code
Heads up! You've already completed this tutorial.

This simple custom widget accepts a list of colours when created, and presents these colours as an array of coloured buttons to click. Clicking on a button emits a signal with the clicked colour. Perfect to use in a bitmap drawing application.

Three widgets are provided —

PaletteHorizontal a linear horizontal palette

Horizontal Palette widget Horizontal Palette widget

PaletteGrid a grid palette. This also accepts an optional second parameter n_columns, which is the number of columns to lay the colours out in. The default is 5 (as seen below).

python 
PaletteGrid('17undertones', n_columns=5)

GridLayout Palette with 17 undertones GridLayout Palette with 17 undertones

There is also a vertical layout PaletteVertical available.

Create GUI Applications with Python & Qt5 by Martin Fitzpatrick — (PyQt5 Edition) The hands-on guide to making apps with Python — Over 10,000 copies sold!

More info Get the book

There are 3 built-in named colour-schemes paired12, category10 and 17undertones.

Paired 12 grid palette Paired 12 grid palette

But you can also provide any list of colours you like when creating the widget.

python 
PaletteGrid(['#000003', '#160B39', '#410967', '#6A176E', '#932567', '#BA3655', '#DC5039', '#F2751A', '#FBA40A', '#F6D542', '#FCFEA4'])

Bokeh Inferno 11 Bokeh Inferno 11

Signals

The palette provides only a single signal .selected which is emitted when a colour is selected in the palette. This sends the selected colour, in the same format as it was when setting the palette.

python 
palette = PaletteHorizontal(['#000003', '#160B39', '#410967'])
palette.selected.connect(print)

The above would print to the console #000003 or #160B39 or #410967 as each colour was clicked.

Well done, you've finished this tutorial! Mark As Complete
[[ user.completed.length ]] completed [[ user.streak+1 ]] day streak

For a complete guide to building GUI applications with Python, see our PyQt6 tutorial. Using another library? We also have a PyQt5 tutorial, PySide6 tutorial and PySide2 tutorial.

Palette was written by Martin Fitzpatrick .

Martin Fitzpatrick has been developing Python/Qt apps for 8 years. Building desktop applications to make data-analysis tools more user-friendly, Python was the obvious choice. Starting with Tk, later moving to wxWidgets and finally adopting PyQt.

Palette was published in widgets on (updated ) . Feedback & Corrections welcome in our public issue tracker.

paint colours colors palette  pyqt5  pyside2 pyqt pyside qt qt5 python