Why We Use Bad Color Maps and What You Can Do About It

This is a peer reviewed article in Proceedings of Human Vision and Electronic Imaging. The article states that we know the rainbow color map is terrible, and it is emphatically reviled by the visualization community, yet its use continues to persist. Why do we continue to use this perceptual encoding with so many known flaws? Instead of focusing on why we should not use rainbow colors, this position statement explores the rational for why we do pick these colors despite their flaws. Often the decision is influenced by a lack of knowledge, but even experts that know better sometimes choose poorly. A larger issue is the expedience that we have inadvertently made the rainbow color map become. Knowing why the rainbow color map is used will help us move away from it. Education is good, but clearly not sufficient. We gain traction by making sensible color alternatives more convenient. It is not feasible to force a color map on users. Our goal is to supplant the rainbow color map as a common standard, and we will find that even those wedded to it will migrate away.



Website:

http://www.kennethmoreland.com/color-advice/BadColorMaps.pdf

Simple

Date (Creation)
2015-02-14
Date (Publication)
2015-02-14
Date (Revision)
Citation identifier
https://www.mica-project.eu/ / MICA_B3-208

MICA WP3 2018-11-03T15:16:00 Record extracted from Batch 3 spreadsheet

Other citation details

No other citation details provided
Purpose

Purpose for data generation is not known
Status
Completed
Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

Sandia National Laboratories

 		Resource provider
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned
dataCentre

  • MICA

MICA ontology (TemporalScheme)

  • Present (2016 data only)

MICA ontology (DataScheme)

  • General descriptive information / Paper
Keywords

  • Requirement for data generation: Voluntary
Keywords

  • Method of data or information generation: Academic research

GEMET Concepts

  • Exploration

GEMET Concepts

  • Geochemical

MICA ontology (DomainScheme)

  • Regional geochemistry
Access constraints
Other restrictions
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Language
English
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information
  • Economy
Description

Not Applicable
Geographic identifier
Other group of countries (please provide more details)
Hierarchy level
Non geographic dataset
Other

Individual item (e.g. a one-off academic paper or single website)

Conformance result

Title

Data uncertainty
Date
Explanation

Are any uncertainty measures provided (e.g. standard errors, confidence intervals, etc.)?
Pass
No

Conformance result

Title

Quality assurance procedures
Date
Explanation

Are quality assurance procedures described?
Pass
No

Conformance result

Title

Information generation methods
Date
Explanation

Are data or information generation methods formally described?
Pass
Yes

Conformance result

Title

Record review
Date
Other citation details

Reviewed by: British Geological Survey
Explanation

Record validation
Pass
No

Conformance result

Title
Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Statement

Organisation source implies that information should be of good quality

Metadata

File identifier
aec13866-dced-4a1a-81ec-a3849651feee XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
MD_CharacterSetCode_utf8
Hierarchy level
Non geographic dataset
Date stamp
2024-11-07
Metadata standard name

ISO19115
Metadata standard version

2003/Cor.1:2006
Metadata author
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

British Geological Survey

enquiries@bgs.ac.uk

Point of contact
 
 

Overviews

overview

Keywords

MICA


Provided by

Share on social sites

Access to the catalogue