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Diverging Color Maps for Scientific Visualization

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Advances in Visual Computing (ISVC 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 5876))

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Abstract

One of the most fundamental features of scientific visualization is the process of mapping scalar values to colors. This process allows us to view scalar fields by coloring surfaces and volumes. Unfortunately, the majority of scientific visualization tools still use a color map that is famous for its ineffectiveness: the rainbow color map. This color map, which naïvely sweeps through the most saturated colors, is well known for its ability to obscure data, introduce artifacts, and confuse users. Although many alternate color maps have been proposed, none have achieved widespread adoption by the visualization community for scientific visualization. This paper explores the use of diverging color maps (sometimes also called ratio, bipolar, or double-ended color maps) for use in scientific visualization, provides a diverging color map that generally performs well in scientific visualization applications, and presents an algorithm that allows users to easily generate their own customized color maps.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sandia National Laboratories,  

    Kenneth Moreland

Authors
  1. Kenneth Moreland
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, USA

    George Bebis

  2. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Richard Boyle

  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Bahram Parvin

  4. Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, USA

    Darko Koracin

  5. Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-Okubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama-shi, 338-8570, 338-8570, Japan

    Yoshinori Kuno

  6. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Junxian Wang

  7. Univ. of Zurich, Department of Informatics, Winterthurerstr. 190, P.O. Box, 8057, Zurich, Switzerland

    Renato Pajarola

  8. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 94550, Livermore, CA, USA

    Peter Lindstrom

  9. University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, 53754, Sankt Augustin, Germany

    André Hinkenjann

  10.  ,  

    Miguel L. Encarnação

  11. SCI Institute & School of Computing, University of Utah, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Cláudio T. Silva

  12. Desert Research Institute, 89512, Reno, NV, USA

    Daniel Coming

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Moreland, K. (2009). Diverging Color Maps for Scientific Visualization. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5876. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10520-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10520-3_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10519-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10520-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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