Bob's pick this week is Light Bartlein Color Maps.
That's right, my own submission. Here's why. Last week Loren blogged about Four Color Images. Her final point, Colormaps are Important referenced some fairly well known scientific work by Light and Bartlein. Jody wished to see these colormaps in MATLAB. Rather than just cross link my submission from Loren's blog and leave it at that, this blog entry provides a place for more focused discussion. A penny for your thoughts...
Get
the MATLAB code
Published with MATLAB® 7.8
Is it a feature or a limitation that the colourmap is not smooth?
On the submission page follow Jody’s link. Scroll down to “Modified Spectral Scheme, 11 Steps” and note that coarse granularity of that map.
Example 2 from LBMAP tried to be faithful. If it does not bear a strong resemblence, that would be a bug on my part. Either way, it should look much smoother with more levels.
I think these are great colormaps and excellent candidates for inclusion in the standard set.
I’d also like to see a few standard earth and sea colormaps. If I see another hydrographic map with depth represented as jet I’ll blow a gasket!
GMT has some nice colormaps. Not sure what the copyright is: there is an
interactive gallery here. Note that their colormaps are non-linear, in that each colour can represent a differing range of data.