Hi all,

I've experimented a bit and come up with this:

https://images.hub.yt/u/fido/m/9bbe3cf6-png/

The script:

http://paste.yt-project.org/show/6151/

This was designed with the viscm project, which is awfully cool.  What
do folks think?  I think Kacper and Nathan also experimented with
viscm and have some ideas too, so maybe we should put it up for an
eventual vote.

Also, I would campaign for calling whatever our new colormap turns out
to be one of these three things, in increasing order of my preference:

agar
kelp
kanten

-Matt

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Stuart and everyone else,
>
> This is great info.  I appreciate everyone's thoughtful replies.
>
> Having both a sequential colormap (which would replace algae) and a
> diverging colormap, would be awesome.  The Paraview devs shipped the
> new matplotlib ones (like Inferno) in 5.0.  I think it would be a fun
> experiment to see if we can come up with something sufficiently
> "branded" or different.  And then if we can't, fall back on something
> like Inferno?
>
> -Matt
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Levy, Stuart A <salevy@illinois.edu> wrote:
>> There was a fair bit of discussion about colormaps - terrible, useful,
>> beautiful - at IEEE Vis last October.   The viridis colormap was a featured
>> one.   So was the traditional rainbow, which lots of info-vis and perceptual
>> people piled on to criticize.
>>
>> Among design criteria for a continuous-valued colormap is whether it's
>> "sequential" (like the typical yt colormap, or viridis) or "diverging".
>> You'd want a diverging colormap to show signed deviations from a norm -
>> where the eye should be caught by places where a value is either much less
>> than, or much more than, something in the middle.   Is it worth offering a
>> typical divergent colormap, as well as a new typical sequential one, in yt?
>>
>> Note that among the Stefan van der Walt & Nathaniel Smith writeup (
>> http://bids.github.io/colormap/ ) on their development of better cmaps, they
>> use Nathan Goldbaum's galaxy evolution as a test case for six (sequential)
>> examples! => http://vorpus.org/~njs/goldbaum-galaxies-all-colormaps.mkv
>>
>> A neat web site with sample colormaps - aimed at mapping discrete values on
>> geographic maps, so not directly applicable but cool - is this, by Cynthia
>> Brewer and Mark Harrower at PSU:
>>     http://colorbrewer2.org/
>> It has a library of predesigned cmaps, and lets you sift them by being
>> colorblind-safe, photocopy safe, etc.
>> ________________________________
>> From: yt-dev [yt-dev-bounces@lists.spacepope.org] on behalf of B.W. Keller
>> [kellerbw@mcmaster.ca]
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2016 12:13
>> To: yt-dev@lists.spacepope.org
>> Subject: Re: [yt-dev] Default colormap
>>
>> There is a really excellent paper on designing color maps called "Color
>> Sequences for Univariate Maps: Theory, Experiments, and Principles" that you
>> can get here:
>> http://ccom.unh.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Ware_1988_CGA_Color_sequences_univariate_maps.pdf
>>
>> If we design a new colormap, this would be a good reference along with those
>> scipy resources.  I personally would love to have an accessible, yt-custom
>> colormap.
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Erik Schnetter <schnetter@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think there are several colourmaps that were created when Viridis
>>> was invented. I personally like Inferno.
>>>
>>> -erik
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 11:34 AM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > I would also be for coming up with our own colormap. That said, I think
>>> > simply modifying algae won't be enough, since it is too perceptually
>>> > nonlinear.
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 10:32 AM, John ZuHone <jzuhone@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> I would go for modifying algae.
>>> >>
>>> >> > On Jan 6, 2016, at 11:30 AM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk@gmail.com>
>>> >> > wrote:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Hi folks,
>>> >> >
>>> >> > For a long time we've used "algae," which was designed by Britton
>>> >> > about eight years ago, as the default colormap.  This has been really
>>> >> > nice for "branding" yt -- if you see an algae plot, it's probably
>>> >> > (not
>>> >> > definitely) made with yt.  But it's also not accessible from a
>>> >> > colorblindness perspective.  Stefan van der Walt has been giving some
>>> >> > really great talks lately about building a better colormap for
>>> >> > matplotlib (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU ) which
>>> >> > culminated in viridis, which is shipping in recent versions of
>>> >> > matplotlib and will become the default.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > In support of this, he built a tool called viscm which can generate
>>> >> > reduced versions of colormaps to show what they would be like with
>>> >> > varying degrees of insensitivity to color.  I've generated outputs
>>> >> > from viscm of three of the custom colormaps we ship with yt:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Algae: https://images.hub.yt/u/fido/m/d275d5e1-png/
>>> >> > Cubehelix: https://images.hub.yt/u/fido/m/8e698928-png/ (I believe
>>> >> > this is now also shipped with MPL)
>>> >> > Kamae: https://images.hub.yt/u/fido/m/e0e40efa-png/
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I love algae, but it's not the best from an accessibility
>>> >> > perspective.
>>> >> >
>>> >> > I'd like to propose that we use a new default colormap.  If we do
>>> >> > this, I see two options:
>>> >> >
>>> >> > * Retain a "branding" by developing a new one either by using the
>>> >> > techniques used by matplotlib (or one of the maps they opted not to
>>> >> > use) or by modifying algae to be more accessible; looking at the
>>> >> > response functions, I suspect it would be reasonably possible to
>>> >> > modify it.  (Modifying algae is my preference.)
>>> >> > * Use viridis (which we may then have to ship if we have older
>>> >> > versions of matplotlib to support)
>>> >> >
>>> >> > -Matt
>>> >> > _______________________________________________
>>> >> > yt-dev mailing list
>>> >> > yt-dev@lists.spacepope.org
>>> >> > http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>>> >>
>>> >> _______________________________________________
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>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
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>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Erik Schnetter <schnetter@gmail.com>
>>> http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> yt-dev mailing list
>>> yt-dev@lists.spacepope.org
>>> http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>>
>>
>>
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