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I've tried using these before and it always progresses as follows: > Why are you using such ugly colors? This is weird, just use a rainbow plot, everyone knows

I've tried using these before and it always progresses as follows: > Why are you using such ugly colors? This is weird, just use a rainbow plot, everyone knows what a rainbow plot is. We're not approving these reports until you change it to a rainbow plot. About 90% of the time rainbow plots just encode "blue=no problem; red=problem; everything else=kinda interesting" so it works out fine anyway. Sometimes I can sneak a red/blue gradient through, but its rare.

apwheele 3y ago
I tend to think the continuous color palettes don't look very nice (no matter what the colors are) in various data visualizations. So I often prefer the color brewer discrete smaller sets, https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=sequential&scheme=BuGn&n=3 https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=sequential&scheme=BuGn&n=3 I use the viridis inferno on occasion as well, https://github.com/sjmgarnier/viridis https://github.com/sjmgarnier/viridis, although sometimes it is too dark.
crazygringo 3y ago
Can you give more context? What industry/department are you in and what kinds of reports? My general experience has been the opposite -- is that anytime you can produce something that feels more elegant or "design"-y, with well-chosen tasteful colors instead of ugly primary colors, that it's extremely well received, and the problem is that coworkers ask me to improve their own charts/presentations which I'm not going to do (but I will send them links to a site like this). But this is in the context of presentations at tech companies.
- angry_moose 3y ago
  Physics simulations - Structural/FEA and Fluid Flow/CFD. I've bounced through aerospace, transportation, and medical over the years and its pretty much been the same everywhere. Management/stakeholders are used to rainbow plots, and haven't had much appetite for anything else (unless the software doesn't give the option).
  - rsfern 3y ago
    If you really can’t get away with a perceptually uniform colormap, have you tried turbo [0] before? It’s a rainbow colormap that tries really hard to have a smooth lightness curve 0: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/08/turbo-improved-rainbow-colormap-for.html?m=1 https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/08/turbo-improved-rainbow-col...

apwheele 3y ago

I tend to think the continuous color palettes don't look very nice (no matter what the colors are) in various data visualizations. So I often prefer the color brewer discrete smaller sets, https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=sequential&scheme=BuGn&n=3 https://colorbrewer2.org/#type=sequential&scheme=BuGn&n=3 I use the viridis inferno on occasion as well, https://github.com/sjmgarnier/viridis https://github.com/sjmgarnier/viridis, although sometimes it is too dark.

crazygringo 3y ago

Can you give more context? What industry/department are you in and what kinds of reports? My general experience has been the opposite -- is that anytime you can produce something that feels more elegant or "design"-y, with well-chosen tasteful colors instead of ugly primary colors, that it's extremely well received, and the problem is that coworkers ask me to improve their own charts/presentations which I'm not going to do (but I will send them links to a site like this). But this is in the context of presentations at tech companies.

angry_moose 3y ago
Physics simulations - Structural/FEA and Fluid Flow/CFD. I've bounced through aerospace, transportation, and medical over the years and its pretty much been the same everywhere. Management/stakeholders are used to rainbow plots, and haven't had much appetite for anything else (unless the software doesn't give the option).
- rsfern 3y ago
  If you really can’t get away with a perceptually uniform colormap, have you tried turbo [0] before? It’s a rainbow colormap that tries really hard to have a smooth lightness curve 0: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/08/turbo-improved-rainbow-colormap-for.html?m=1 https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/08/turbo-improved-rainbow-col...