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Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

learnui.design

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Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#21

Post by tethys »

mpetroff wrote: post #16
tethys wrote: post #9

Whenever I need colors for a chart, I type "12 bit" in my address bar and pray my browser hasn't forgotten the URL: https://iamkate.com/data/12-bit-rainbow/

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

Fair point! My eyes are (mostly) fine, but even I would have a hard time telling these colors apart when used in the same chart.

I usually do very simple charts, using maybe 2 or 3 colors, and with this palette I feel the results are typically very pleasing, whichever colors I end up selecting.

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#22

Post by Ancapistani »

mpetroff wrote: post #16
tethys wrote: post #9

Whenever I need colors for a chart, I type "12 bit" in my address bar and pray my browser hasn't forgotten the URL: https://iamkate.com/data/12-bit-rainbow/

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

This is super interesting to me.

Is there another 12-color palette that allows you to easily distinguish between every color? If so, I'd love to see it.

I'd also appreciate if anyone who happens to read this who has a different variety of colorblindness - or who finds color palettes inaccessible for any reason - could share what colors in the 12-bit palette and any others that are suggested in this thread are problematic and why, that'd be awesome :)

My initial instinct is that finding 12 colors that are visually distinguishable for all users is likely impossible. That being the case, the ideal solution IMO is likely something like providing a dynamic option to change the palette (or even the representation!) and then choosing a default that the author is happy with.

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#23

Post by Ancapistani »

mpetroff wrote: post #16
tethys wrote: post #9

Whenever I need colors for a chart, I type "12 bit" in my address bar and pray my browser hasn't forgotten the URL: https://iamkate.com/data/12-bit-rainbow/

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

I understand there's no direct way to answer this, but does this image appear the same as the live page to you?

https://imgur.com/a/nZnr0BN

If so... wow. That's not good at all; it's almost as hard to distinguish the minimum value from the maximum value as it is the two in the center.

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#24

Post by Ancapistani »

cush wrote: post #19

Careful, this is really not good for folks who are color blind. In chromium devtools you can enable various color blind emulations in the device emulation menu. ctrl+shift+P -> "Protanopia"

Ohhh, that's a great tool that I didn't know existed. I've used GPU-based filters in the past for this.

For others - this panel is shown at the bottom, alongside the "Console" panel (not the "Console" tab at the top!) that's sometimes shown. You can open it by clicking the three vertical dots at the top right of the devtools panel, "More tools", then "Rendering".

The setting you're looking for is "Emulate vision deficiencies".

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#25

Post by Borg3 »

Hah, what a coincidence. I did small research today for heatmaps for my very simply graph lib for Ruby. I recommend this blog post:

https://research.google/blog/turbo-an-improved-rainbow-color...

I myself implemented 4 colorize functions for that. Common linear Blue -> Red. Linear Blue -> Red adjusted via Green for visibility. Blue -> Yellow -> Red also linear. And of course Turbo from that blog..

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#26

Post by mpetroff »

Ancapistani wrote: post #23
mpetroff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

I understand there's no direct way to answer this, but does this image appear the same as the live page to you? https://imgur.com/a/nZnr0BN If so... wow. That's not good at all; it's almost as hard to distinguish the minimum value from the maximum value as it is the two in the center.

While not completely identical, it looks very similar (I also only have strong protanomaly, not complete protanopia, so I wouldn't expect it to look identical).

Color-vision deficiency simulations collapse colors along the confusion lines, but this can be done multiple ways. These different mapping will all look the same (and identical to the original) to a dichromat but will appear different, with different perceptual differences between colors, to a color-normal individual. Simulating in a way that accurately portrays perceived color distances is still an open research problem.

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#27

Post by mpetroff »

Ancapistani wrote: post #22
mpetroff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

This is super interesting to me. Is there another 12-color palette that allows you to easily distinguish between every color? If so, I'd love to see it. I'd also appreciate if anyone who happens to read this who has a different variety of colorblindness - or who finds color palettes inaccessible for any reason - could share what colors in the 12-bit palette and any others that are suggested in this thread are problem…

> My initial instinct is that finding 12 colors that are visually distinguishable for all users is likely impossible.

Without going to lightness extremes, I agree that this likely isn't possible, at least when trying to accommodate all three types of dichromacy and for small color patch sizes (like those typically used for line and scatter plots). For example, you could take the 10-color accessible palette from work I've published [1] and add black and bright yellow to get twelve colors, but the lightness extremes of adding these colors would result in significantly-different visual weights. Based on a validation survey I conducted, I think even ten colors is pushing the limit of what's reasonable when lightness extremes aren't used.

> could share what colors in the 12-bit palette...are problematic

#9d5 and #4d8 is the color pair I find particularly problematic.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.02270

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#28

Post by dleeftink »

Ancapistani wrote: post #22
mpetroff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't use rainbow-type palettes, as they generally have poor accessibility for colorblind individuals. With my red deficiency, the middle two colors in this palette look virtually identical.

This is super interesting to me. Is there another 12-color palette that allows you to easily distinguish between every color? If so, I'd love to see it. I'd also appreciate if anyone who happens to read this who has a different variety of colorblindness - or who finds color palettes inaccessible for any reason - could share what colors in the 12-bit palette and any others that are suggested in this thread are problem…

Cheysson and other cross hatched patterns will get you a long way [0].

[0]: https://observablehq.com/@tomshanley/cheysson-color-palettes

Re: Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)

#29

Post by dark-star »

dleeftink wrote: post #8
dark-star wrote: post #7

Definitely not colorblind-friendly (color contrast too low)

The default palette essentially is IBM's Color-blind safe[0], which does provide some 'safe' defaults. IBM's design guidelines provide some sound advice for color use too [1]. [0]: https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/#:~:text=Three%20of%20... [1]: https://www.ibm.com/design/language/color/

not at all.

As someone with slight colorblindness, I can tell you that the colors #58508d and #bc5090 are too close to each other and very hard to distinguish

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