Selecting Color Tables

For many plot types you can select the color table to use for coloring the surfaces, boundaries, contours, streamlines, slices, and so on. These color tables use 1024 colors each. The best way to compare the color tables is to experiment with the options.

is the default for plots that support color tables. The color ordering corresponds to the wavelengths of the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It starts at the small-wavelength end with dark blue. The colors range through shades of blue, cyan, green, yellow, and red. The disadvantage of this color table is that people with color vision deficiencies (affecting up to 10% of technical audiences) cannot see distinctions between reds and greens.

is similar but uses lighter colors.

is similar to the color table but includes violet at the small-wavelength end of the visible spectrum. It also includes richer shades of green to more closely replicate the human perception of visible light. You can use it with the Ray Optics Module, for example, to accurately visualize polychromatic light.

colors range from black through red and yellow to white, corresponding to the colors iron takes as it heats up.

is similar but uses equal distances from black to red, yellow, and white, which means that the black and red regions become larger compared to the Thermal color table.

is similar but uses equal distances from dark red to orange, yellow, and white, which means that the region with the lowest values is red instead of black as it is in the Thermal color table.

is also similar but does not end in pure black and white as the Thermal color table. Using it can be useful if you do not want the color for the highest temperature to be identical with a white background or the color for the lowest temperature to be identical with a black background.

colors range from black through blue, magenta, red, and yellow to white, corresponding to the colors in an image from a heat camera.

is similar to but with slightly lighter colors.

The color table is useful for displaying periodic functions because it has a sharp color gradient — it varies the hue component of the hue-saturation-value (HSV) color model, keeping the saturation value constant (equal to 1). The colors begin with red, then pass through yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, and finally return to red.

The color table is useful for data that naturally has positive and negative attributes in addition to a magnitude. As an example of a double-ended color scheme, it ranges linearly from blue to light gray, and then linearly from white to red. When the range of the visualized quantity is symmetric around zero, the color red or blue indicates whether the value is positive or negative, and the saturation indicates the magnitude.

People with color vision deficiencies can interpret the Wave color table because it does not use red-green-gray distinctions, making it efficient for 99.98% of the population.

is similar and ranges linearly from a lighter blue to white (instead of light gray) and then linearly from white to a lighter red.

The color table spans from green through yellow to red. is similar but uses lighter colors.

The color table spans from red through magenta and cyan to blue. is similar but uses lighter colors.

The , , , and color tables resemble the colors in the aurora australis (southern light), aurora borealis (northern light), and Jupiter’s aurora, respectively. The AuroraAustralis color table spans from white through green and indigo to blue. The AuroraAustralisDark color is similar to AuroraAustralis but does not start with absolute white so that the end value’s color is different from a white background. The AuroraBorealis color table also spans from white through green and indigo to blue but with a larger indigo portion. The JupiterAuroraBorealis color table spans from black through blue to white.

The color table uses colors associated with twilight (the illumination of the Earth’s lower atmosphere when the Sun is not directly visible), spanning colors from pink through white to blue.

The color table uses yellow and blue colors in a color table that is suited for normal vision, a deuteranomaly, or red-green colorblindness. It was created by Jamie Nuñez, Ryan Renslow, and Chris Anderton at the Biological Sciences Division of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (located in Richland, Washington state, United States).

The color table uses the linear gray scale from black to white — the easiest palette to understand and order.

Gray scale plots are often easier to use for publication. People can also better perceive structural detail in a gray scale than with color. Use this color table to increase the probability that a plot is interpreted correctly by people with color vision deficiencies.

The color table varies linearly from dark gray (RGB: 0.95, 0.95, 0.95) to light gray (RGB: 0.05, 0.05, 0.05). Choose this to overcome two difficulties that the GrayScale color table has when used for printing on paper — it gives the impression of being dominated by dark colors, and white is indistinguishable from the background.

You can also add your own continuous color tables and discrete color tables as text files with RGB data that you store in the data/colortables/ folder in the directory where COMSOL Multiphysics is installed or in the user settings directory .comsol/v56 under your local home directory.