
Optimizing colormaps with consideration for color vision deficiency - vanderZwan
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0199239
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vanderZwan
For those unfamiliar with the viridis color map, it is one of the most recent
developments in creating sequential color maps that are inherently easier to
interpret correctly, color blind friendly, and properly print to black and
white if necessary. Note, by the way, that the last point is a natural
consequence of the second! Getting better at making color maps more CVD
friendly ends up helping everyone.

Viridis was created by Stéfan van der Walt and Nathaniel Smith as an open-
source map for matplotlib. The website that kept track of its creation gives
an excellent overview with more detailed information[0]. In the last couple of
years it has been considered the gold standard of CVD friendly color maps.
Other work in this space is Dave Green's Cubehelix and Fabio Creameri's
Scientific Colour-Maps (SciCo)[1][2].

Having protanomally myself I greatly appreciate the work that has gone into
all of these maps, and in my opinion viridis is a beautiful default map to
use.

By freak coincidence I came across the pre-print of this paper yesterday, one
day before publication. When comparing cividis and viridis head to head[3] I
do see more detail and contrast in both the high and low end of the map, so it
is a definite improvement for me!

More importantly, the method to improve viridis could be applied to other
color maps too. On my end, yesterday's discovery lead to a cosy little twitter
discussion that ended up introducing Crameri and Nuñez to each other, who had
been unaware of each other's work[4]. So personally, I hope that the SciCo
maps can be polished further with the insights from this paper.

[0] [https://bids.github.io/colormap/](https://bids.github.io/colormap/)

[1]
[https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/](https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/)

[2]
[http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps.php](http://www.fabiocrameri.ch/colourmaps.php)

[3]
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dji4wmnX4AEGkHA.png:orig](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dji4wmnX4AEGkHA.png:orig)

[4]
[https://twitter.com/JobvdZwan/status/1024288199785553920](https://twitter.com/JobvdZwan/status/1024288199785553920)

