Color Schemes

Provides qualitative, diverging and sequential color schemes.

Usage

colour(
  palette,
  reverse = FALSE,
  names = FALSE,
  lang = "en",
  force = FALSE,
  ...
)

color(palette, reverse = FALSE, names = FALSE, lang = "en", force = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

palette: A character string giving the name of the scheme to be used (see info()).
reverse: A logical scalar: should the resulting vector of colors should be reversed?
names: A logical scalar: should the names of the colors should be kept in the resulting vector?
lang: A character string specifying the language for the color names. It must be one of "en" (English, the default) or "fr" (French).
force: A logical scalar. If TRUE, forces the color scheme to be interpolated. It should not be used routinely with qualitative color schemes, as they are designed to be used as is to remain color-blind safe.
...: Further arguments passed to colorRampPalette.

Value

A function function with the following attributes, that when called with a single argument (an integer specifying the number of colors) returns a (named) vector of colors.

palette: A character string giving the name of the color scheme.
type: A character string giving the corresponding data type. One of "qualitative", "diverging" or "sequential".
interpolate: A logical scalar: can the color palette be interpolated?
missing: A character string giving the the hexadecimal representation of the color that should be used for NA values.
max: An integer giving the maximum number of color values. Only relevant for non-interpolated color schemes.

For color schemes that can be interpolated (diverging and sequential data), the color range can be limited with an additional argument. range allows to remove a fraction of the color domain (before being interpolated; see examples).

References

Crameri, F. (2018). Geodynamic diagnostics, scientific visualisation and StagLab 3.0. Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 2541-2562. doi:10.5194/gmd-11-2541-2018

Crameri, F., Shephard, G. E. & Heron, P. J. (2020). The misuse of colour in science communication. Nature Communications, 11, 5444. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-19160-7

Jones, A., Montanarella, L. & Jones, R. (Ed.) (2005). Soil atlas of Europe. Luxembourg: European Commission, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. 128 pp. ISBN: 92-894-8120-X.

Okabe, M. & Ito, K. (2008). Color Universal Design (CUD): How to Make Figures and Presentations That Are Friendly to Colorblind People. URL: https://jfly.uni-koeln.de/color/.

Tol, P. (2021). Colour Schemes. SRON. Technical Note No. SRON/EPS/TN/09-002, issue 3.2. URL: https://personal.sron.nl/~pault/data/colourschemes.pdf

Commission for the Geological Map of the World

Author

N. Frerebeau

Examples

## Okabe and Ito colour scheme
colour("okabe ito")(8)
#> [1] "#000000" "#E69F00" "#56B4E9" "#009E73" "#F0E442" "#0072B2" "#D55E00"
#> [8] "#CC79A7"
#> attr(,"missing")
#> [1] NA
plot_scheme(colour("okabe ito")(8))


## Paul Tol's colour schemes
### Qualitative data
plot_scheme(colour("bright")(7))

plot_scheme(colour("high contrast")(3))

plot_scheme(colour("vibrant")(7))

plot_scheme(colour("muted")(9))

plot_scheme(colour("medium contrast")(6))

plot_scheme(colour("pale")(6))

plot_scheme(colour("dark")(6))

plot_scheme(colour("light")(9))

### Diverging data
plot_scheme(colour("sunset")(11))

plot_scheme(colour("BuRd")(9))

plot_scheme(colour("PRGn")(9))

### Sequential data
plot_scheme(colour("YlOrBr")(9))

plot_scheme(colour("iridescent")(23))

plot_scheme(colour("discrete rainbow")(14))

plot_scheme(colour("discrete rainbow")(23))

plot_scheme(colour("smooth rainbow")(34))


## Scientific colour schemes
### Geologic timescale
plot_scheme(colour("stratigraphy")(175))

### AVHRR global land cover classification
plot_scheme(colour("land")(14))

### FAO soil reference groups
plot_scheme(colour("soil")(24))


## Adjust colour levels
PRGn <- colour("PRGn")
plot_scheme(PRGn(9, range = c(0.5, 1)))