Re: [matplotlib-devel] Matplotlib's new default colormap

[gary r. <gar...@gm...>]

There was a talk by Kristen Thyng at scipy2014 that might be a good
backgrounder for this:
http://pyvideo.org/video/2769/perceptions-of-matplotlib-colormaps

At the end she references this site http://mycarta.wordpress.com/ of Matteo
Niccoli which is full of good content. I wonder if it's worth contacting
Kristen or Matteo to let them know there's a discussion going on here that
they might be interested in?


On 22 November 2014 at 09:53, Eric Firing <ef...@ha...> wrote:

> On 2014/11/21, 4:42 PM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 5:46 PM, Darren Dale <dsd...@gm...> wrote:
> >> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 12:32 PM, Phil Elson <pel...@gm...>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Please use this thread to discuss the best choice for a new default
> >>> matplotlib colormap.
> >>>
> >>> This follows on from a discussion on the matplotlib-devel mailing list
> >>> entitled "How to move beyond JET as the default matplotlib colormap".
> >>
> >>
> >> I remember reading a (peer-reviewed, I think) article about how "jet"
> was a
> >> very unfortunate choice of default. I can't find the exact article now,
> but
> >> I did find some other useful ones:
> >>
> >>
> http://cresspahl.blogspot.com/2012/03/expanded-control-of-octaves-colormap.html
> >> http://www.sandia.gov/~kmorel/documents/ColorMaps/
> >> http://www.sandia.gov/~kmorel/documents/ColorMaps/ColorMapsExpanded.pdf
> >
> > Those are good articles. There's a lot of literature on the problems
> > with "jet", and lots of links in the matplotlib issue [1]. For those
> > trying to get up to speed quickly, MathWorks recently put together a
> > nice review of the literature [2]. One particularly striking paper
> > they cite studied a group of medical students and found that (a) they
> > were used to/practiced at using jet, (b) when given a choice of
> > colormaps they said that they preferred jet, (c) they nonetheless made
> > more *medical diagnostic errors* when using jet than with better
> > designed colormaps (Borkin et al, 2011).
> >
> > I won't suggest a specific colormap, but I do propose that whatever we
> > chose satisfy the following criteria:
> >
> > - it should be a sequential colormap, because diverging colormaps are
> > really misleading unless you know where the "center" of the data is,
> > and for a default colormap we generally won't.
> >
> > - it should be perceptually uniform, i.e., human subjective judgements
> > of how far apart nearby colors are should correspond as linearly as
> > possible to the difference between the numerical values they
> > represent, at least locally. There's lots of research on how to
> > measure perceptual distance -- a colleague and I happen to have
> > recently implemented a state-of-the-art model of this for another
> > project, in case anyone wants to play with it [3], or just using
> > good-old-L*a*b* is a reasonable quick-and-dirty approximation.
> >
> > - it should have a perceptually uniform luminance ramp, i.e. if you
> > convert to greyscale it should still be uniform. This is useful both
> > in practical terms (greyscale printers are still a thing!) and because
> > luminance is a very strong and natural cue to magnitude.
> >
> > - it should also have some kind of variation in hue, because hue
> > variation is a really helpful additional cue to perception, having two
> > cues is better than one, and there's no reason not to do it.
> >
> > - the hue variation should be chosen to produce reasonable results
> > even for viewers with the more common types of colorblindness. (Which
> > rules out things like red-to-green.)
> >
> > And, for bonus points, it would be nice to choose a hue ramp that
> > still works if you throw away the luminance variation, because then we
> > could use the version with varying luminance for 2d plots, and the
> > version with just hue variation for 3d plots. (In 3d plots you really
> > want to reserve the luminance channel for lighting/shading, because
> > your brain is *really* good at extracting 3d shape from luminance
> > variation. If the 3d surface itself has massively varying luminance
> > then this screws up the ability to see shape.)
> >
> > Do these seem like good requirements?
>
> Goals, yes, though I wouldn't put much weight on the "bonus" criterion.
>   I would add that it should be aesthetically pleasing, or at least
> comfortable, to most people.  Perfection might not be attainable, and
> some tradeoffs may be required. Is anyone set up to produce test images
> and/or metrics for judging existing colormaps, or newly designed ones,
> on all of these criteria?
>
> Eric
>
> >
> > -n
> >
> > [1] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/875
> > [2]
> http://uk.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/articles/rainbow-color-map-critiques-an-overview-and-annotated-bibliography.html
> > [3] https://github.com/njsmith/pycam02ucs ; install (or just run out
> > of the source tree) and then use pycam02ucs.deltaEp_sRGB to compute
> > the perceptual distance between two RGB colors. It's also possible to
> > use the underlying color model stuff to do things like generate colors
> > with evenly spaced luminance and hues, or draw 3d plots of the shape
> > of the human color space. It's pretty fun to play with :-)
> >
>
>
>
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