# New colorscheme for Plots.jl 2.0
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** colors, poll, plots
**Created:** [August 5, 2024, 12:39pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841 "2024-08-05T12:39:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BeastyBlacksmith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/BeastyBlacksmith)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 12:39pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/1 "2024-08-05T12:39:40Z")
For the upcoming Plots.jl 2.0 we are thinking about changing the default colorschemes. We identified 3 potential candidates for a new color palette and 4 potential gradients. You can see the combinations in action in [this post on github](https://github.com/JuliaPlots/Plots.jl/issues/4966#issuecomment-2252918274).
Please cast your vote here:
_Poll ([view on site](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/1))_
_Poll ([view on site](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/1))_
_Poll ([view on site](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/1))_
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### Author:  [@empet](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/empet)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 2:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/2 "2024-08-05T14:55:24Z")
Graphics libraries like matplotlib, plotly, bokeh, altair, have as default gradient a perceptually uniform
colorscheme, but not one defined according to a color model that has more than 40 years (Crameri’s scientific colormaps, Kovesi colormaps are defined using such a model).
These libraries (matplotlib, plotly, bokeh, altair, etc) have as default sequential colorscheme one defined according to a colormodel, presented at the link that follows, i.e. the same colormodel used in the definition of viridis, plasma, inferno, magma, and cmocean colormaps). More details here [https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-good-colorscheme-encodes-the-right-information-on-data-is-inferno-a-good-colorscheme/99962](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-good-colorscheme-encodes-the-right-information-on-data-is-inferno-a-good-colorscheme/99962).
Image illustrating that lajolla, devon, navia and lipari are not perceptually uniform:
A good choice could be one of the sequential colormaps from cmocean package:
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### Author:  [@empet](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/empet)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/3 "2024-08-05T15:06:23Z")
Where can be found the definition of lipari and navia to check their lightness? A search in github repo, ColorSchemes.jl, doesn’t return a data file with these names?
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### Author:  [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 5:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/4 "2024-08-05T17:21:11Z")
> [@empet](#):
>
> A search in github repo, [ColorSchemes.jl](https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages/General/ColorSchemes), doesn’t return a data file with these names?
Github doesn’t search files larger than about 300KB. Because `ColorSchemes/data/scicolor.jl` is 827KB, it can’t be searched for in Github.
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### Author:  [@empet](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/empet)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/5 "2024-08-05T17:37:20Z")
I’ve succeeded to get the files and inserted the plots of their lightness as can be seen above. Thanks!
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### Author:  [@jar1](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jar1)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 9:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/6 "2024-08-05T21:22:58Z")
Do I understand correctly that what we want is a colormap with low variation in the perceptual differences between adjacent colors? If `DE_2000` is a good metric of these differences then we can look at the standard deviation to find those with low variation?
```julia
using GLMakie, IterTools
firstarg(x, xs...) = x
let step = 1
metric = DE_2000()
syms = [:viridis, :inferno, :devon, :tokyo, :matter, :ice, :deep, :haline]
fig = Figure()
css = map(syms) do s
getproperty(ColorSchemes, s).colors[begin:step:end]
end
dss = map(css) do cs
IterTools.partition(cs, 2, 1) .|> splat((a,b) -> colordiff(a,b; metric))
end
order = sortperm(dss; by=std)
syms = syms[order]
css = css[order]
dss = dss[order]
Label(fig[1,1], "Perceptual differences\n$(typeof(metric))(colormap[$(step == 1 ? "" : step)n], colormap[$(step == 1 ? "" : step)(n+1)])"; fontsize=20, tellwidth=false)
gl = GridLayout(fig[2,1], length(syms)+1, 4; font="Noto Sans")
Label(gl[1,1], "colormap"; font="Noto Bold")
Label(gl[1,2], "mean"; font="Noto Bold")
Label(gl[1,3], "std"; font="Noto Bold")
axes = map(enumerate(zip(syms, css, dss))) do (i, (sym, cs, ds))
Label(gl[i+1,1], string(sym); tellheight=false, font="Noto Bold")
Label(gl[i+1,2], string(round(mean(ds); digits=2)), tellheight=false)
Label(gl[i+1,3], string(round(std(ds); digits=2)), tellheight=false)
ylims = (0, 1.2step)
ax = Axis(gl[i+1,4], limits=(nothing, ylims))
heatmap!(ax, eachindex(cs), range(ylims[1], ylims[2]; length=10), firstarg; colormap=cs)
lines!(ax, ds; color=:white)
# lines don't support stroke (https://github.com/MakieOrg/Makie.jl/issues/1597), so hack it.
lines!(ax, ds .- .02; color=:black, linewidth=.7)
lines!(ax, ds .+ .02; color=:black, linewidth=.7)
ax, std(ds)
end
save("/tmp/fig.png", fig; px_per_unit=2, size=(1200,800))
fig
end
```
I think turbo is intended to make small differences visible, so I guess there’s an opportunity for comparing the std to the mean adjacent difference. As expected, turbo gives away some uniformity to get some more contrast.
```julia
let metric = DE_2000()
syms = [:viridis, :inferno, :devon, :tokyo, :hawaii, :buda, :matter, :ice, :deep, :haline, :turbo]
css = map(syms) do s
getproperty(ColorSchemes, s).colors
end
dss = map(css) do cs
IterTools.partition(cs, 2, 1) .|> splat((a,b) -> colordiff(a,b; metric))
end
fig = Figure()
ax = Axis(fig[1,1]; title="$(typeof(metric)) adjacent differences", xlabel="mean", ylabel="std")
text!(ax, sum.(dss)/256, std.(dss); text=string.(syms), align=(:center, :baseline))
fig
end
```
@peterkovesi who developed [GitHub - peterkovesi/PerceptualColourMaps.jl: Perceptually Uniform Colour Maps for Julia](https://github.com/peterkovesi/PerceptualColourMaps.jl) might have some thoughts as well.
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### Author:  [@halleysfifthinc](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/halleysfifthinc)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 9:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/7 "2024-08-05T21:37:14Z")
I strongly second that the default gradient should be perceptually uniform.
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### Author:  [@empet](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/empet)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2024, 10:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/8 "2024-08-05T22:32:48Z")
I recall that a colorscheme is perceptually uniform if transforming each RGB color in its definition to a color in the space CAM02-UCS, of coords (lightness, chroma, hue), the lightness is linear. This means that the graph of the function that associates to each normalized value x\in [0,1] the lightness if its corresponding color in the colorscheme is a line. In the plots posted above the graph of lightness of the lajolla, devon, navia and lipari are not straight lines.
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### Author:  [@ElOceanografo](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ElOceanografo)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2024, 1:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/9 "2024-08-06T01:54:01Z")
+1 for perceptual uniformity. I like the magma colormap a lot, and the similar Cmocean matter. Viridis and haline are good too.
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### Author:  [@Crameri](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Crameri)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2024, 7:08pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/new-colorscheme-for-plots-jl-2-0/117841/10 "2024-09-16T19:08:00Z")
Nice effort! – Thanks.