colorPalette           package:fUtilities           R Documentation

_C_o_l_o_r _P_a_l_e_t_t_e_s

_D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n:

     Functions to create color palettes. 

     The functions are:

       'rainbowPalette'  Contiguous rainbow color palette,
       'heatPalette'     Contiguous heat color palette,
       'terrainPalette'  Contiguous terrain color palette,
       'topoPalette'     Contiguous topo color palette,
       'cmPalette'       Contiguous cm color palette,
       'greyPalette'     R's gamma-corrected gray palette,
       'timPalette'      Tim's Matlab like color palette,
       'rampPalette'     Color ramp palettes,
       'seqPalette'      Sequential color brewer palettes,
       'divPalette'      Diverging color brewer palettes,
       'qualiPalette'    Qualified color brewer palettes,
       'focusPalette'    Red, green blue focus palettes,
       'monoPalette'     Red, green blue mono palettes.

_U_s_a_g_e:

      
     rainbowPalette(n = 64, ...) 
     heatPalette(n = 64, ...) 
     terrainPalette(n = 64, ...) 
     topoPalette(n = 64, ...) 
     cmPalette(n = 64, ...) 

     greyPalette(n = 64, ...)
     timPalette(n = 64)

     rampPalette(n, name = c("blue2red", "green2red", "blue2green",     
         "purple2green", "blue2yellow", "cyan2magenta"))
         
     seqPalette(n, name = c(
         "Blues", "BuGn", "BuPu", "GnBu", "Greens", "Greys", "Oranges", 
         "OrRd", "PuBu", "PuBuGn", "PuRd", "Purples", "RdPu", "Reds", 
         "YlGn", "YlGnBu", "YlOrBr", "YlOrRd"))
     divPalette(n, name = c(
         "BrBG", "PiYG", "PRGn", "PuOr", "RdBu", "RdGy", "RdYlBu", "RdYlGn", 
         "Spectral"))   
     qualiPalette(n, name = c(
         "Accent", "Dark2", "Paired", "Pastel1", "Pastel2", "Set1", "Set2", 
         "Set3")) 
         
     focusPalette(n, name = c("redfocus", "greenfocus", "bluefocus"))
     monoPalette(n, name = c("redmono", "greenmono", "bluemono"))

_A_r_g_u_m_e_n_t_s:

       n: an integer, giving the number of greys or colors to be
          constructed. 

    name: a character string, the name of the color set. 

     ...: arguments to be passed, see the details section 

_D_e_t_a_i_l_s:

     All Rmetrics' color sets are named as 'fooPalette' where the 
     prefix 'foo' denotes the name of the underlying color set. 

     *R's Contiguous Color Palettes:*

      Palettes for 'n' contiguous colors are implemented in the
     'grDevices' package. To be conform with Rmetrics' naming
     convention for color palettes we have build a wrapper around the
     underlying functions. These are the 'rainbowPalette',  
     'heatPalette', 'terrainPalette', 'topoPalette', and the  
     'cmPalette'.  Conceptually, all of these functions actually use
     (parts of) a line  cut out of the 3-dimensional color space,
     parametrized by the function 'hsv(h,s,v,gamma)', where 'gamma=1'
     for the 'fooPalette'  function, and hence, equispaced hues in RGB
     space tend to cluster at  the red, green and blue primaries. Some
     applications such as contouring  require a palette of colors which
     do not wrap around to give a final  color close to the starting
     one. To pass additional arguments to the underlying functions we
     refer to consult 'help(rainbow)'. With rainbow, the parameters
     start and end can be used to specify  particular subranges of
     hues. Synonyme function calls are  'rainbow', 
     'heat.colors','terrain.colors',  'topo.colors', and the
     'cm.colors'.  

     *R's Gamma-Corrected Gray Palette:*

      The function 'grayPalette' chooses a series of 'n' 
     gamma-corrected gray levels. The range of the gray levels can be
     optionally monitored through the '...' arguments, for details
     'help(gray.colors)', which is a synonyme function call in the
     'grDevices' package. 

     *Tim's Matlab like Color Palette:*

      The function 'timPalette' creates a color set ranging from blue 
     to red, and passes through the colors cyan, yellow, and orange. It
     comes from the Matlab software, originally used in fluid dynamics
     simulations. The function here is a copy from R's contributed
     package 'fields' doing a spline interpolation on 'n=64' color
     points. 

     *Color Ramp Palettes:*

      The function 'rampPalette' creates several color ramps. The 
     function is implemented from Tim Keitt's contributed R package 
     'colorRamps'.  Supported through the argument 'name' are the
     following color ramps: '"blue2red"', '"green2red"',
     '"blue2green"',  '"purple2green"', '"blue2yellow"',
     '"cyan2magenta"'. 

     *Color Brewer Palettes:*

      The functions 'seqPalette', 'divPalette', and 'qualiPalette'
     create color sets according to R's  contributed 'RColorBrewer'
     package. The first letter in the function name denotes the type of
     the color set: "s" for sequential palettes, 'd" for diverging
     palettes, and "q" for qualitative palettes. 
       _Sequential palettes_ are suited to ordered data that progress  
     from low to high. Lightness steps dominate the look of these
     schemes,  with light colors for low data values to dark colors for
     high data  values. The sequential palettes names are: Blues, BuGn,
     BuPu, GnBu, Greens, Greys, Oranges, OrRd, PuBu, PuBuGn, PuRd,
     Purples, RdPu, Reds, YlGn, YlGnBu, YlOrBr, YlOrRd. 
      _Diverging palettes_ put equal emphasis on mid-range critical
     values  and extremes at both ends of the data range. The critical
     class or  break in the middle of the legend is emphasized with
     light colors  and low and high extremes are emphasized with dark
     colors that have  contrasting hues. The diverging palettes names
     are: BrBG, PiYG, PRGn, PuOr, RdBu, RdGy, RdYlBu, RdYlGn, Spectral. 
      _Qualitative palettes_ do not imply magnitude differences between
      legend classes, and hues are used to create the primary visual 
     differences between classes. Qualitative schemes are best suited
     to  representing nominal or categorical data. The qualitative
     palettes names are: Accent, Dark2, Paired, Pastel1, Pastel2, Set1,
     Set2, Set3. 
      In contrast to the original color brewer palettes, the palettes
     here are created by spline interpolation from the color variation
     with the most different values, i.e for the sequential palettes
     these are 9 values, for the diverging palettes these are 11
     values, and for the qualitative palettes these are between 8 and
     12 values dependeing on the color set. 

     *Graph Color Palettes:*

         The function 'perfanPalette' creates color sets inspired  by
     R's cotributed package 'Performance Analytics'.  These color
     palettes have been designed to create readable,  comparable line
     and bar graphs with specific objectives. 
      _Focused Color Palettes:_ Color sets designed to provide focus to
      the data graphed as the first element. This palette is best used
     when  there is clearly an important data set for the viewer to
     focus on,  with the remaining data being secondary, tertiary, etc.
     Later elements  graphed in diminishing values of gray. 
      _Monchrome Color Palettes:_ These include color sets for
     monochrome  color displays.

_V_a_l_u_e:

     returns a character string of color strings.

_N_o_t_e:

     The palettes are wrapper functions provided in several contributed
      R packages. These include:

     Cynthia Brewer and Mark Harrower for the brewer palettes, 
      Peter Carl and Brian G. Peterson for the "PerformanceAnalytics"
     package, 
      Tim Keitt for the "colorRamps" package, 
      Ross Ihaka for the "colorspace" package, 
      Tomas Aragon for the "epitools" package, 
      Doug Nychka for the "fields" package, 
      Erich Neuwirth for the "RColorBrewer" package. 

     Additional undocumented hidden functions:

       '.asRGB'       Converts any R color to RGB (red/green/blue),
       '.chcode'      Changes from one to another number system,
       '.hex.to.dec'  Converts heximal numbers do decimal numbers,
       '.dec.to.hex'  Converts decimal numbers do heximal numbers.

_E_x_a_m_p_l_e_s:

     ## GreyPalette:
        greyPalette()

