POVColor is a color picker for POV-Ray. It allows visual selection of not only colors, but also color maps. It provides a good deal of features, including built in gamma correction, support for the 'filter' and 'transmit' parts of a color, load and save directly as a POV-Ray file, and more.
I wrote POVColor because no other program offered the features I wanted. Most other color pickers for POV-Ray only support picking colors and copying them to the clipboard. In addition, most do not support the 'filter' and 'transmit' portions of a color. POVColor supports this and much more.
As show below, the main window consits of the menu and tool bars, the preview area, and the status bar.
The Item menu or toolbar buttons can be used to add items to the file. Once added, they appear in the preview. Colors and color maps have different icons to tell them apart. Additionally, disabled items have a red 'X' through them.
If no file is currently open, items can be created and the code will be copied to the clipboard when done.
This section describes the various menus and what they do. Most of it should be self expanatory.
To create a color, use the Item->New Color menu or the toolbar button. The color dialog as shown below will appear.
The color dialog is divided into two sides. The left side shows the basic and custom colors and a preview of the current color. The right side shows the color sliders for adjusting the components. By default, the dialog starts by showing the RGB mode, but it can be switched to other modes.
The basic colors shows some predefined colors.
The custom colors allows the current color to be saved and used later. Clicking on a custom color changes the current color. Alternate-clicking (right clicking with a left right handed mouse or left clicking with a left handed mouse) on the custom color sets the custom color.
To create a color map, use the Item->New Map menu or the toolbar button. The color map dialog as shown below will appear.
The map dialog is divided into two areas, the map preview, the color preview.
To add items to the map, click on the map in an empty area. To select an item, click on an item. To remove an item, alternate-click on the item to remove.
To move an item, click on it and then drag it.
When an item is selected, it's color is shown in the color preview. This area is divided into four cells. The left two cells show the item's lower color and the right two cells show the item's upper color. Click the left cell to edit the lower color. Click the right cell to edit the upper color. The middle two cells edit both the lower and upper colors, starting from the lower or upper color.
POVColor can have some items enabled and disabled. In addition, it is possible to have multiple items with the same name, but only one will be enabled. A disabled item will have a red 'X' over it.
To enable an item, ues the Edit->Enable menu item or toolbar button. To disable an item, use the Edit->Disable menu item or toolbar button.
When a disabled item is saved, the entire item is written out to the file, but is wrapped in '#if(0) ... #end' to prevent POV-Ray from processsing it.
The options can be adjusted a great deal. Most of the options deal with formatting, but some deal with other featues.
The indent options control how indenting is done in the output file. The spelling options allow the file to use the 'color' or 'colour' spellings. The version option allows the file to be declared as a particular version.
The create options control how the item is created. If it is 'Always', then the item is written out as-is. If it is '#ifndef', it is wrapped in code to only declare the item if it is not defined. If it is '#undef', the item will be undefined first, then declared.
The auto-copy option will cause the code for an item to be automatically copied to the clipboard when it is changed.
POVColor allows for the display of colors to be gamma-corrected. As shown, gamma correction can be turned on and off, and the correction amount can be adjusted.
In addition, a basic calibration screen is provided to aid in calibrating the monitor brightness and contrast if needed.