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divergent colors around zero in levelplot()

9 messages · Bert Gunter, Achim Zeileis, Don McKenzie +1 more

#
I would like to produce a levelplot with divergent colors such that increasingly negative values of Z get darker in the first color and increasingly
positive values get darker in the second color.  this is common in cartography. I have tried tinkering with the col.regions argument but the best I can do
is to get the split in the middle of my range of Z, but in my particular case range(Z) is (-1,12).

I am using R 3.0.2 on OSX 10.9

Here is an example

x <- y <- c(1:25) 
grid <- expand.grid(x=x,y=y)
grid$z <- sort(runif(625,min=-1,max=12))
levelplot(z ~ x*y,grid)   # produces the default pink and blue but the split is at ~5.5

# do something clever here
# e.g., my.colors <- <create a palette that splits at zero>

levelplot(z ~ x*y,grid,col.regions=my.colors)  # so there should be some light pink at the bottom and the rest increasingly intense blue

Ideas appreciated.  Thanks in advance.



Don McKenzie
Research Ecologist
Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab
US Forest Service

Affiliate Professor 
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences 
University of Washington 
 
dmck at uw.edu
#
Use the Rcolorbrewer package.

-- Bert
On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Don McKenzie <dmck at u.washington.edu> wrote:

  
    
#
Thanks Bert.  I?ll check it out.

Don
On Nov 22, 2013, at 10:25 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

            
Don McKenzie
Research Ecologist
Pacific WIldland Fire Sciences Lab
US Forest Service

Affiliate Professor
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences 
College of the Environment
University of Washington
dmck at uw.edu
#
On Fri, 22 Nov 2013, Don McKenzie wrote:

            
One approach is to limit the range of colors (to match the range of the 
data) as you suggest above. The other approach is to extend the range of 
the legend (beyond the range of the data). For example:

levelplot(z ~ x*y, grid, at = seq(-12, 12, length = 100))

This produces a legend that is symmetric around zero.

For other/better diverging color palettes, you can use the RColorBrewer 
package (as suggested by Bert) or the colorspace package (see e.g., its 
graphical choose_color() tool).
2 days later
#
Bert or anyone else familiar with RColorBrewer:

Has anyone tried to accomplish with RColorBrewer what I asked about in my original post (below)? 

Here is an example cribbed from the levelplot() help examples

x <- seq(pi/4, 5 * pi, length.out = 100)
y <- seq(pi/4, 5 * pi, length.out = 100)
r <- as.vector(sqrt(outer(x^2, y^2, "+")))
grid <- expand.grid(x=x, y=y)
grid$z <- cos(r^2) * exp(-r/(pi^3))

# now use RColorBrewer to get a palette

library("RColorBrewer?)
levelplot(z~x*y, grid,col.regions=brewer.pal(6,"BrBG?))   # the numeric argument to brewer.pal is the number of colors used ? I tried several

This gives me a nice brown-to-green gradient but does not (AFAICS) give me control over where the center of the divergence lies. Even in this symmetrical
example, I can?t get it to be at zero ? it repeats on either side of zero.

thanks to anyone who pages through all this and makes a suggestion, even if it doesn?t work.  :-)
On Nov 22, 2013, at 10:25 PM, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:

            
Don McKenzie
Research Ecologist
Pacific Wildland Fire Science Lab
US Forest Service

Affiliate Professor
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
University of Washington
dmck at uw.edu
#
Never mind.   Solved.  ?cuts? argument back in levelplot(). Duh.
On Nov 25, 2013, at 4:27 PM, Don McKenzie <dmck at u.washington.edu> wrote:

            
Don McKenzie
Research Ecologist
Pacific Wildland Fire Science Lab
US Forest Service

Affiliate Professor
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
University of Washington
dmck at uw.edu
#
In case anyone cares (?), here is a function to do what I was asking, which doesn?t use colorBrewer but could with some hacking. I?m sure it?s fragile, but it works with well behaved integers and zero in the middle, which was all I needed. The output is a palette that can be passed to levelplot() and other functions.

Cheers

diverge.color <- function(start.color,end.color,min.value,max.value,mid.value=0,mid.color="ivory")

{
	# based on ideas from Maureen Kennedy, Nick Povak, and Alina Cansler

        # creates a palette for the current session for a divergent-color
	# graphic with a non-symmetric range
	# "cuts" = the number of slices to be made in the range above and below "mid.value"

        ramp1 <- colorRampPalette(c(start.color,mid.color))
        ramp2 <- colorRampPalette(c(mid.color,end.color))

       # now specify the number of values on either side of "mid.value"
       
       max.breaks <- round(max.value - mid.value)
       min.breaks <- round(mid.value - min.value)
       
       num.breaks <- max(max.breaks,min.breaks)
       
       low.ramp <- ramp1(num.breaks)
       high.ramp <- ramp2(num.breaks)
       
       # now create a combined ramp from the higher values of "low.ramp" and 
       # the lower values of "high.ramp", with the longer one using all values 
       # high.ramp starts at 2 to avoid duplicating zero
       
       myColors <- c(low.ramp[(num.breaks-min.breaks):num.breaks],high.ramp[2:max.breaks])
  
      myColors
}
On Nov 25, 2013, at 4:27 PM, Don McKenzie <dmck at u.washington.edu> wrote:

            
Don McKenzie
Research Ecologist
Pacific Wildland Fire Science Lab
US Forest Service

Affiliate Professor
School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
University of Washington
dmck at uw.edu
#
On Mon, 25 Nov 2013, C. Alina Cansler wrote:

            
These colors are not very well balanced because "blue" is much darker than 
"red". You can see that more clearly when you desaturate the colors where 
the blue branch corresponds to darker colors than the red branch.

The palettes in RColorBrewer or colorspace offer better balanced palettes. 
Consider the code below.

And as for the original question: diverge_hcl(99) would be one option to 
obtain 99 divergent colors in "colorspace".

library("colorspace")
pal <- function(col, border = "light gray") {
   n <- length(col)
   plot(0, 0, type="n", xlim = c(0, 1), ylim = c(0, 1),
     axes = FALSE, xlab = "", ylab = "")
   rect(0:(n-1)/n, 0, 1:n/n, 1, col = col, border = border)
}

par(mfrow = c(2, 2), mar = rep(1, 4))
pal(div.colors(9))
pal(diverge_hcl(9))
pal(desaturate(div.colors(9)))
pal(desaturate(diverge_hcl(9)))