Visualization Viewpoints Editor
Holly Rushmeier, Jason A. Dykes, John C. Dill, Peter A. Yoon, Theresa-Marie Rhyne · 2007
esearch has shown that the rainbow color map is rarely the optimal choice when displaying data with a pseudocolor map. The rainbow color map con- fuses viewers through its lack of perceptual ordering, obscures data through its uncontrolled luminance vari- ation, and actively misleads interpretation through the introduction of non-data-dependent gradients. Despite much published research on its deficiencies, the rainbow color map is prevalent in the visualization community. We present survey results showing that the rainbow color map continues to appear in more than half of the relevant papers in IEEE Visualization Conference proceedings; for example, it appeared on 61 pages in 2005. Its use is encouraged by its selection as the default color map used in most visualization toolkits that we inspected. The visualization communi- ty must do better. In this article, we reiterate the characteristics that make the rainbow color map a poor choice, provide examples that clearly illustrate these deficiencies even on simple data sets, and recommend better color maps for several categories of display. The goal is to make the rainbow color map as rare in visualization as the goto statement is in program- ming—which complicates the task of analyzing and ver- ifying program correctness (see the classic Go To Statement Considered Harmful paper by Dijkstra at http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/). Problems with the rainbow color map