WORKING WITH COLORS

Java supports color in a portable, device-independent fashion. The AWT color system
allows you to specify any color you want. It then finds the best match for that color,
given the limits of the display hardware currently executing your program or applet.
Thus, your code does not need to be concerned with the differences in the way color is
supported by various hardware devices. Color is encapsulated by the Color class.
As you saw in Chapter 19, Color defines several constants (for example, Color.black)
to specify a number of common colors. You can also create your own colors, using one of
the color constructors. The most commonly used forms are shown here:
Color(int red, int green, int blue)
Color(int rgbValue)
Color(float red, float green, float blue)
The first constructor takes three integers that specify the color as a mix of red, green,
and blue. These values must be between 0 and 255.

The second color constructor takes a single integer that contains the mix of red, green,
and blue packed into an integer. The integer is organized with red in bits 16 to 23,
green in bits 8 to 15, and blue in bits 0 to 7. Here is an example of this constructor:
int newRed = (0xff000000 | (0xc0 << 16) | (0x00 << 8) | 0x00);
Color darkRed = new Color(newRed);
The final constructor, Color(float, float, float), takes three float values (between 0.0
and 1.0) that specify the relative mix of red, green, and blue.
Once you have created a color, you can use it to set the foreground and/or
background color by using the setForeground( ) and setBackground( ) methods
described in Chapter 19. You can also select it as the current drawing color.