# Color Maps

Polyscope supports the following color maps (set via the enum polyscope::gl::ColorMapID).

Different color maps are appropriate for different situations:

• sequential maps data in to a linear range (when it doesn’t fall in to one of the more specific categories below).
• diverging maps data in to a linear range, where the center value is “neutral” and the endpoints of the range are opposite and symmetric. Examples include a rate of change, or a residual; in both cases 0 semantially means “nothing”, and the endpoints have opposite meaning.
• cyclic maps data defined on the circle, like an angle
• decorative maps should generally not be used to encode numerical data, but may be useful for other visualization purposes
Name Type Enum
viridis sequential VIRIDIS
blues sequential BLUES
reds sequential REDS
coolwarm diverging COOLWARM
pink-green diverging PIYG
phase cyclic PHASE
spectral decorative SPECTRAL
rainbow decorative RAINBOW
jet decorative JET

1. Viridis is by Nathaniel J. Smith, Stefan van der Walt, and Eric Firing. link

2. Phase is from the cmocean package. link

3. The other color maps have unclear origins or are simple linear ramps, and are implemented in matplotlib