On: The misuse of colour in science communication

[twic]

There's a kind of colourmap which is a luminance gradient in a single hue, repeated over and over again with different hues. See the various "ramps" colourmaps in ImageJ (where colourmaps are called "look-up tables", or LUTs):

http://soliton.vm.bytemark.co.uk/pub/cpt-city/imagej/index.h...

I've seen it with a single hue as well.

This kind of colourmap makes it really easy to see contours. The tradeoff is that it's hard to make comparisons between distant areas of the image.

[bluenose69 → twic]

Thanks. Yes, I like that type, and use it sometimes. I tend to use light-to-dark brown hues, which can give a pleasing wood-grain effect.