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Does someone smarter than myself see a downside of using Turbo for heatmap visualizations?

by lbotos 7y ago

kmundnic 7y ago
Some time ago I looked into this topic, and in my opinion the blog post misses two points: (1) Conversion to gray scale won't be good because the scale is not linear, which is important for printing, and (2) In Jet (and also, Turbo), high and low values of a measurement don't map well to colors. This is well described in the paper introducing cividis [1] (check out [2] for code). [1]: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.01662.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.01662.pdf [2]: https://github.com/marcosci/cividis https://github.com/marcosci/cividis
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > the blog post misses two points: (1) Conversion to gray scale won't be good [...] important for printing Covered: "When rendered in grayscale, the coloration will be ambiguous, since some of the lower values will look identical to higher values. Consequently, Turbo is inappropriate for grayscale printing and for people with the rare case of achromatopsia."
dietr1ch 7y ago
Do you need to use just a single one? It seems that interactively going through multiple scales and ranges might allow you to get a detailed view when needed.
krick 7y ago
Well, it's kind of specific visualization's designer's choice, and my main complaint isn't something the authors of Turbo are unaware of (it's like that by design), but I think non-linearity of the light profile is far bigger downside than is being admitted. I'm not speaking about unable to print in greyscale or "people with the rare case of achromatopsia": it is actually harder for me to say at a glance what regions are hotter on non-ligh-linear image (or, more precisely, non-light-monotonic image). I will make mistakes when tired while working with Jet/Turbo images, which I won't make while working with Inferno. So if you use one and only one colorspace for some heatmap visualization, I think I would greatly appreciate using Inferno (or Helix, or similar) instead of Turbo in the most cases.

Does someone smarter than myself see a downside of using Turbo for heatmap visualizations?

by lbotos 7y ago

Does someone smarter than myself see a downside of using Turbo for heatmap visualizations?

Some time ago I looked into this topic, and in my opinion the blog post misses two points: (1) Conversion to gray scale won't be good because the scale is not linear, which is important for printing, and (2) In Jet (and also, Turbo), high and low values of a measurement don't map well to colors. This is well described in the paper introducing cividis [1] (check out [2] for code). [1]: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.01662.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.01662.pdf [2]: https://github.com/marcosci/cividis https://github.com/marcosci/cividis

zimpenfish 7y ago
> the blog post misses two points: (1) Conversion to gray scale won't be good [...] important for printing Covered: "When rendered in grayscale, the coloration will be ambiguous, since some of the lower values will look identical to higher values. Consequently, Turbo is inappropriate for grayscale printing and for people with the rare case of achromatopsia."

dietr1ch 7y ago

Do you need to use just a single one? It seems that interactively going through multiple scales and ranges might allow you to get a detailed view when needed.

krick 7y ago

Well, it's kind of specific visualization's designer's choice, and my main complaint isn't something the authors of Turbo are unaware of (it's like that by design), but I think non-linearity of the light profile is far bigger downside than is being admitted. I'm not speaking about unable to print in greyscale or "people with the rare case of achromatopsia": it is actually harder for me to say at a glance what regions are hotter on non-ligh-linear image (or, more precisely, non-light-monotonic image). I will make mistakes when tired while working with Jet/Turbo images, which I won't make while working with Inferno. So if you use one and only one colorspace for some heatmap visualization, I think I would greatly appreciate using Inferno (or Helix, or similar) instead of Turbo in the most cases.