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Chasing Rainbows: A Color-Theoretic Framework for Improving and Preserving Bad Colormaps

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Advances in Visual Computing (ISVC 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 10072))

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Abstract

The scientific visualization community increasingly questions the use of rainbow colormaps. This is not unfounded as significant problems are readily seen in a luminance plot of the rainbow colormap. Many good, generally applicable colormaps are proposed as direct replacements for the rainbow. However, there are still many who choose rainbows and like them. Would a colormap with perfect luminance and the chromaticity of a rainbow find a wider audience? This was our motivation in studying the range of chromatic effects arising from luminance corrections. Consequently we developed a framework for adjusting colormaps to various degrees which produces favorable results on a wide range of colormaps. In this work we will detail this framework and demonstrate its effectiveness on several colormaps.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, Illinois, 61801, USA

    Robert Sisneros, Mark W. Van Moer & David Bock

  2. University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee, 37996, USA

    Mohammad Raji

Authors
  1. Robert Sisneros
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  2. Mohammad Raji
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  3. Mark W. Van Moer
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  4. David Bock
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert Sisneros .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Nevada , Reno, Nevada, USA

    George Bebis

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

    Richard Boyle

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

    Bahram Parvin

  4. Desert Research Institute , Reno, Nevada, USA

    Darko Koracin

  5. The Australian National University , O'Malley, Aust Capital Terr, Australia

    Fatih Porikli

  6. Pilot AI Labs , Redwood City, California, USA

    Sandra Skaff

  7. University of Florida , Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Alireza Entezari

  8. Google Inc. , Mountain View, California, USA

    Jianyuan Min

  9. Osaka University , Osaka, Japan

    Daisuke Iwai

  10. The MOVES Institute , Monterey, California, USA

    Amela Sadagic

  11. University of Arizona , Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Carlos Scheidegger

  12. Université Paris-Sud , Orsay, France

    Tobias Isenberg

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Sisneros, R., Raji, M., Van Moer, M.W., Bock, D. (2016). Chasing Rainbows: A Color-Theoretic Framework for Improving and Preserving Bad Colormaps. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10072. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50835-1_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50835-1_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-50834-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-50835-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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