More fun color maps / color scales
jcor
@sjr51 kindly shared code for Kovesi's perceptually uniform color maps here. It's not that hard to click on these *.ibw waves and then choose them for a fun new color scale. But why not have Igor 10 actually embed some of these improved, perceptually-uniform color scales?
It would also be great to have a default option for transparency in color scales. Again, not so hard to do manually (add a 4th column), but would be a nice feature for Igor 10.
You can use any color map you'd like by creating Igor waves with 3 columns (opaque) or 4 columns (alpha).
Igor 8: DisplayHelpTopic "Color Table Waves Index" (and you may need to pull the help file into view with Windows->Control->Retrieve All Windows)
Igor 9: DisplayHelpTopic "Color Table Waves in the Igor Pro Folder"
Or use the Graph->Packages->Color Table Waves menu item to view the help topic.
It contains instructions on how to create color table waves from sources like you mention.
August 3, 2025 at 11:29 pm - Permalink
Hi Jim,
I had known about this, but found it cumbersome to deal with the 4D waves. My suggestion was meant to be an "easy" "fun" thing for Igor 10 --- for example, just having an "alpha" value in the regular popup window should be relatively easy to achieve.
To expand a bit more, when loading Kovesi's color maps above I was frustrated by being unable to check a simple "log scale" checkbox or to play with settings as easily as I'm used to.
But... looking in Graph->Packages->Color Table Control, I found a great panel. That's a great hidden feature! If only it supported custom color scales.
j
August 4, 2025 at 04:40 pm - Permalink