Complementary colors?

[R. MacDonald]

Hello, Group,

If drawing on a control, it would be desirable to select a colour that
significantly differs from the control's background colour. Is there a
standard (or preferred) way to programmatically select a complementary
color at run time?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,
Randy

[Göran Andersson]

I would use the GetBrightness method on the color to determine if it's
closer to black or write, and use the other.

The complementary color could be calculated using:

Color.FromArgb(theColor.ToArgb() xor 0x00ffffff)

That doesn't work for all colors, though. The complementary color for
50% gray is 50% gray...

R. MacDonald wrote:

Hello, Group,

If drawing on a control, it would be desirable to select a colour that
significantly differs from the control's background colour. Is there a
standard (or preferred) way to programmatically select a complementary
color at run time?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,
Randy

[R. MacDonald]

Hello, Göran,

Thanks for the suggestion about GetBrightness. Looking at this I see
that there are also GetHue and GetSaturation methods that I might be
able to apply to this requirement.

Cheers,
Randy

Göran Andersson wrote:

I would use the GetBrightness method on the color to determine if it's
closer to black or write, and use the other.

The complementary color could be calculated using:

Color.FromArgb(theColor.ToArgb() xor 0x00ffffff)

That doesn't work for all colors, though. The complementary color for
50% gray is 50% gray...

R. MacDonald wrote:

Hello, Group,

If drawing on a control, it would be desirable to select a colour that
significantly differs from the control's background colour. Is there
a standard (or preferred) way to programmatically select a
complementary color at run time?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers,
Randy