UIColor Macros

Below are two macros I paste inside every new iPhone project. Besides saving a few keystrokes, they work well when using the color picker application. Let’s look at the macros first:

 #define RGB(r, g, b) 
    [UIColor colorWithRed:r/255.0 green:g/255.0 blue:b/255.0 alpha:1]
 #define RGBA(r, g, b, a) 
    [UIColor colorWithRed:r/255.0 green:g/255.0 blue:b/255.0 alpha:a]

Here’s the code without/with the macro:

 // Code without the macro
  msgLabel.textColor = 
     [UIColor colorWithRed:255/255.0 green:251/255.0 blue:204/255.0 alpha:1];
 
  // Or like this...
  msgLabel.textColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:1.0 green:.98 blue:.8 alpha:1];
 
 // Code with macro
  msgLabel.textColor = RGB(255, 251, 204);

UIColor expects its parameters to be expressed as values in the range of 0.0 to 1.0, so I pass in the color value I’m looking for between 0 and 255, and let the macro do the math for me.

Let me show you how I use the macro with the color picker application. The figure below shows a screenshot of the color picker – at this point I have selected the color I am interested in, so I choose rgb from the dropdown menu.

From here, I copy the value from the field “Hex:”, paste this into my project and finish by changing rgb to RGB.