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spacing of color key in filled.contour

3 messages · Claudia Tebaldi, Jim Lemon, Clint Bowman

#
Hi all


I'm plotting colored contour maps using filled.contour. My levels
are very unevenly spaced, with, say, high resolution in the small
numbers but ranges that can be an order of magnitude or two larger in
absolute value compared to where the action takes place. Aside from
transforming the data, is there a way to control the color spacing in
the key to the right of the map? Right now I get most of the key
length taken up by a couple of colors and the rest all squeezed into
thin slices, which also creates a problem with the fourth axis labels
getting drawn on top of one another.

thank you very much in advance

Claudia
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On 01/20/2011 09:19 AM, claudia tebaldi wrote:
Hi Claudia,
You can roll your own color key with the color.legend function in 
plotrix. Just specify the colors you want in "rect.col" and the labels 
in "legend".

Jim
#
I've gotten good results using the sine function to map colors. 
For example, when plotting x, map the range(x) to (-pi/2,pi/2) 
which the sine will transform to (-1,1), then add 1 and multiply by 
half the desired number of colors.  Now the integer values will 
pick the colors and give a pleasing display.

If the "squeeze" is taking place only over one of the tails (which 
sounds like your case) map the range from (0,pi/2) or (-pi/2,0) and 
make the necessary scaling adjustments to cover the number of 
colors desired.

Essentially, you are transforming the color mapping instead of 
transforming your data.

Clint