unconf18
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ropensci
color palette aggregator/modifier tool
There are loads of packages/ways to choose color palettes for R graphics, but I still end up doing a lot of iterations through many packages until I find a suitable color palette.
Existing packages (please add):
colorspace has a GUI that makes choosing colors easy with a preview function for different types of plots and a slider for Hue, Chroma, Luminance, and Power, but doesn't integrate seamlessly with other color packages. 'RColorBrewer' (here) has many palettes but you have to use the colorRampPalette() function to get more than 9 or 11 colors. hues allows you to pick palettes with many colors, but requires numeric HCL inputs for colors. There are many great palettes out there (i.e. Beyonce or wesanderson ) in addition, but checking how your graph looks across palettes from different packages requires loading and knowing the different syntax of each.
Idea: A one-stop-shop for colors in R that combines the best of existing tools. The goal would be to change the workflow from iterating across multiple packages to find a suitable palette to using one tool that:
- Aggregates and displays color palettes across packages
- Allows users to increase/decrease the number of colors in these palettes
- Pick and choose colors from predefined palettes to create your own custom palette
- Adds transparency or ensure colorblind-friendly schemes
- Get immediate previews of what a/your graph would look like when you change any of these options
my colleague Margaret Siple inspired this idea
Great idea! My go-to comprehensive list is r-color-palettes, but it's neither interactive, nor does it quantify how many colours are available. A more interactive tool would be fantastic.
The options and interactivity reminds me of colorbrewer2.org. It helps picking a palette taking in consideration the given criteria.
Summary: an interactive application that aggregates color palettes, allows users to choose and combine palette colors, preview and iterate easily, and makes transparency and CVD friendliness a one-click step. Doesn't require manually loading or learning syntax of existing palette solutions.