emilhvitfeldt / r-color-palettes

Comprehensive list of color palettes available in R ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Comprehensive list of color palettes in r

The goal of this repository is to have a one stop destination for anyone looking for a color palette to use in r. If you would like to help/contribute please feel free post an issue, PR or send a email to [email protected].

Interactive Color Picker at https://emilhvitfeldt.github.io/r-color-palettes/

Further down the page is all the palettes available in the R ecosystem ordered alphabetically by package name. A list of palettes ordered by type can be found here Type sorted palettes to shorten the length of this page.

Paletteer package

I have collected all the palettes displayed here in a single package using a unified framework. Developmental version can be found here.

You can install the released version of paletteer from CRAN with:

If you want the development version instead then install directly from GitHub:

Table of Contents

• Main page
• Blogposts and other resources
• Color manipulation packages
• Generative packages
• Perception of color palettes
  • Printing in black and white
  • Color blindness
• Honorable mentions
• Palettes sorted by Package (alphabetically)
  • Sequential color palettes
  • Diverging color palettes
  • Qualitative color palettes
  • Canva palettes
  • Palettetown palettes
• News

Blogposts and other resources

Here is a collection of material on the use and creation of color palettes in r.

• Creating corporate colour palettes for ggplot2
• Make your own color palettes with paletti
• How to create a color palette in R with more than 15 colors with ggplot2
• Generating a Custom Color Palette Function in R
• How to build a color palette from any image with R and k-means algo
• Why choice of colour is important beyond aesthetic considerations and how the quality of a palette might be assessed
• Viz palette: colors in action

Color manipulation packages

• Extract palettes from images and text
• Fast Vectorised Colour Conversion and Comparison
• How to Read, Inspect, and Manipulate Color Swatch Files
• Simple colour manipulation in R

Generative packages

The purpose of this project is to showcase the palettes already available in R (packages). However sometimes you have to resort to make one yourself. When that is the case the following packages aides in creating.

• AndreaCirilloAC/paletter
• jolars/qualpalr
• ronammar/randomcoloR
• johnbaums/hues
• ColorPalette
• oaColors
• earthtones
• leeper/colourlovers

When creating color palettes certain website have also provided valuable

• paletton
• Data color picker
• i want hue
• Viz Palette

Perception of color palettes

Selecting a color palette requires a number of different considerations. Within these considerations is

• the palette retains its integrity when printed in black and white
• people with colorblindness are able to understand it

In the following I have outlined a couple of those problems

Printing in black and white

While most of the palettes presented here contains a wide variety of colors. While that is compelling, you need to remember that your product might be printed in black and white one day, and you should pick a palette that allows for interpretation if that is the case.

First example is the rainbow palette from the grDevices package with its colorful display. However as we see here would it be horrible if used for black and white printing since different colors are mapped to the same shade of grey.

A related problem happens with the standard color palette used in ggplot2 since that color is picked to have constant chroma and luminance thus yielding the same shade of grey when desaturated. (This palette is no longer the default for continuous variables in ggplot2 after version 3.0.0)

One of the continuous palette that satisfy this criteria is the well known viridis palettes.

To test if the palette you want to use will be distorted when in black and white, use the colorspace::desaturate() to desaturate it.

Color blindness

Another thing you have to take into consideration when picking a palette is how it would be viewed by a person who is color blind. To visualize the effect of color blindness on our palettes we will turn to two packages. The dichromat package can simulate color blindness on individual color and then also entire palettes like so in this rainbow palette:

Another package that can provide helpful is the amazing colorblindr package that is able to simulate color blindness to ggplot objects them self.

Honorable mentions

Due to the somehow vague notion of “color palette” have I decided to exclude certain kinds of packages from the main gallery. Generative package have been discussed earlier.

cpt-city

The amazing cpt-city is a wonderful project of creating an archive of color palettes to be used in cartography, technical illustration and design. Due to the immense size (7140) I have decided to refer to it instead of re-illustration them in this repository. If any of the palettes found here are for your liking they can be accessed in R using the following package:

# CRAN version
install.packages("cptcity")

sport colors

Many of the palettes in sports related palettes have a very limited number of colors (often only 2 colors). This leads to quite low usability outside of the special area of sports analytic.

• colorr Color palettes for EPL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL teams.

• beanumber/teamcolors An R package providing color palettes for pro sports teams.

Canva palettes

The ggthemes package include the 150 four-color palettes from the canva.com. Due to the size and limited number of colors in the palettes these palettes will be featured on their own page and only once.

• Canva colors

Palettes sorted by Package (alphabetically)

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("awhstin/awtools")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("riatelab/cartography")
# CRAN version
install.packages("cartography")

# CRAN version
install.packages("dichromat")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("EdwinTh/dutchmasters")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("road2stat/ggsci")
# CRAN version
install.packages("ggsci")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("gadenbuie/ggpomological")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("jrnold/ggthemes")
# CRAN version
install.packages("ggthemes")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("ewenme/ghibli")
# CRAN version
install.packages("ghibli")

# CRAN version
install.packages("grDevices")

the jcolors continuous palettes are currently not available in the paletteer package.

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("jaredhuling/jcolors")
# CRAN version
install.packages("jcolors")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("johannesbjork/LaCroixColoR")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("m-clark/NineteenEightyR")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("jkaupp/nord")
# CRAN version
install.packages("nord")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("ropenscilabs/ochRe")
# CRAN version
install.packages("ochRe")

# CRAN version
install.packages("oompaBase")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("timcdlucas/palettetown")
# CRAN version
install.packages("palettetown")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("AustralianAntarcticDivision/palr")
# CRAN version
install.packages("palr")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("kwstat/pals")
# CRAN version
install.packages("pals")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("kwstat/pals")
# CRAN version
install.packages("pals")

# CRAN version
install.packages("Polychrome")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("EmilHvitfeldt/quickpalette")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("Nowosad/rcartocolor")
# CRAN version
install.packages("rcartocolor")

# CRAN version
install.packages("RColorBrewer")

# CRAN version
install.packages("Redmonder")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("alyssafrazee/RSkittleBrewer")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("thomasp85/scico")
# CRAN version
install.packages("scico")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("sjmgarnier/viridis")
# CRAN version
install.packages("viridis")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("karthik/wesanderson")
# CRAN version
install.packages("wesanderson")

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("ndphillips/yarrr")
# CRAN version
install.packages("yarrr")

r-color-palettes's Issues

fix canva link

cividis from viridis package

https://twitter.com/CedScherer/status/969905062079287297

differentiate between economist palettes in ggtheme

economist_bg and economist_fg in the ggthemes packages.

NineteenEightyR

https://github.com/m-clark/NineteenEightyR

reference paleteer package

https://github.com/m-clark/NineteenEightyR

Add palettes from unikn

This is super cool resource! Thank you very much.
Here is another source of palettes - https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/unikn/vignettes/colors.html

Add Scientific Colour Maps (scico)

Just mentioned in R-bloggers: scico is the R-package for Scientific colour maps by F. Crameri:

# development version
devtools::install_github("thomasp85/scico")
# CRAN version
install.packages("scico")

library(scico)
scico_palette_show()

Talk about problems with Equidistant HSV Colors

https://www.vis4.net/blog/2011/12/avoid-equidistant-hsv-colors/

cividis palette

I've recently came across the cividis palette, which is a version of viridis optimised for colour vision deficiency.

https://github.com/marcosci/cividis

Add tvthemes palettes

https://github.com/Ryo-N7/tvthemes
Thanks

https://github.com/m-clark/visibly

Redo type sorted palettes pages

Add section for large color palettes

Talk about color blindness

• https://github.com/clauswilke/colorblindr package allows you to check a ggplot object to see what changes under certain colorblindnesses.
• https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/dichromat/index.html package also for more direct analysis of how different colors appear to colorblind people. The package itself also have a set of 17 color palettes that are colorblind friendly. names dichromat::colorschemes.

Add seperate page for palettetown

display all the colors in the palettetown package instead of the 10 showcases.

complete rerun of ggthemes is needed

expand all ggthemes excel palettes

Add Okabe-Ito

Thank you for this resource - awesome list!

The 'Okabe-Ito' palette could be a good addition too perhaps?

hrbrmstr/swatches

https://github.com/hrbrmstr/swatches

gadenbuie/ggpomological

https://github.com/gadenbuie/ggpomological

reflect paletteer version 1.0.0

Base R colors

Base R colors can be used to form palettes (i.e. c(orange, orange1, orange2, orange3, orange4)). Tian Zheng created a layout of all base R colors in alphabetic order.

add rPlotter

https://github.com/woobe/rPlotter

expand ggthemes solarized palettes

Add Manu palette

https://github.com/G-Thomson/Manu

Thanks

Add feathers palettes

Hello, I was readind about feather package, which has color palettes based on Australian birds.

Here is the link of the package https://github.com/shandiya/feathers.

I'd love to use these colors with paletteer.

Sort by Minimum Number of Colors Needed

I'm so happy that you made this website! Thank you!

As you solicited improvements as issues, I'm here to suggest one. It'd be great to be able to filter palettes by the minimum number of colors needed. Ideally an optional range could be provided (x > n > y) such that you could find color palettes with at least x colors but no more than y.

This would allow you to find color combinations that fit your data, while not having to experiment with gradient or other palettes that have way too many similarly colored options.

Sincerely,

A guy who has many datasets with > 20 localities, each of which needs its own color

palr

Love this project! I had no idea where to put my palettes so created palr. Very keen to consolidate

Include cptcity package

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/cptcity/index.html

Show how integer palettes work

palette()

plot(1:8, col = 1:8)

palette("Set 3")

plot(1:8, col = 1:8)

Add rock themes palette

https://github.com/johnmackintosh/rockthemes

Thanks

jrnold/ggthemes and Paul Tol's color palette document

https://twitter.com/julianjon/status/970390587407966208

Add PNWColors

Thank you for this great resource! It is super helpful to have all the palettes in one place.

I just discovered this beautiful palette by Jake Lawlor that I wanted to recommend for inclusion:
https://github.com/jakelawlor/PNWColors

Include info on whether palettes are colorblind accessible

It would be awesome if we could also sort palettes by their ability to be distinct/accessible for those experiencing some form of color-blindness.

reference http://projects.susielu.com/viz-palette

cartography palettes

The cartography package provides a set of palettes for thematic cartography purposes:

# Developmental version
devtools::install_github("riatelab/cartography")
# CRAN version
install.packages("cartography")

library(cartography)
display.carto.all()

carto.pal() builds sequential, diverging or qualitative color palettes. Diverging color palettes can be dissymmetric (different number of colors in each of the two gradients).

Add jcolors package

https://github.com/jaredhuling/jcolors

shades package

The shades package may be of interest.

The shades package allows colours to be manipulated easily in R. Properties such as brightness and saturation can be quickly queried, changed or varied, and perceptually uniform colour gradients can be constructed. It plays nicely with the pipe operator from the popular magrittr package, and fits naturally into that paradigm.

I think you lack sanzo https://github.com/jmaasch/sanzo

consider adding tinter package

https://poissonconsulting.github.io/tinter/

Add continuous palettes to the visualizer

This might be in the works, but right now the only available visualization is for discrete palettes here.

Are there any plans to add a visualizer for continuous ones?

center images

New Palette Package?

Seems like it would be super helpful so consolidate these into a single package. Any plans to do so?

Add wavecolour

Hi Emil,
I've just finished a palette for wavelengths, wavecolour - the package also contains some functions for translating wavelengths into RGB and hex codes. Would be cool if you could add it to the list!
It is opinionated, and should only really be used for visualising visible light/wavelengths, I've tried to stress that point in the README. Thanks!
Mikkel

Palette Picker Site Suggestion: Add filter palette base on desired length

Hi this is my first time using this color palette feature and I feel helped with this feature.

But can I give a bit suggestion like add a feature to let us choose the color palette base on the color palette length ?
I think it will be useful if for example in my dataset I want to color the line graph with col base on A category column.
And in A category column consist of n unique value.
And if I use this feature, I will not troubled by counting the color palette length manually and also save time from error
cause by the color palette length are shorter than the category unique value.

And also consider this suggestion too: #50 (comment)
Or make the partition of color palette into multiple page with consist two container.

Upper container contain the color palette filter feature and Lower Container contain color palette page that have page slider in it
so that we can slide to other page without scrolling down and scrolling up too far.

And again. thanks for making Palette-Picker.

Add severance

Please consider adding the GitHub-only R package, severance, first introduced by @ivelasq here.

Palette picker site: Consider adding tooltip

I'm loving the palette picker!

I have one suggestion to make navigation a bit smoother. Right now one has to scroll down (a potentially long list of palettes), click on a palette, and then scroll up to the top of the page to see which package::palette combination they've just picked. I like that functionality, but it may be useful to also include a tooltip, such that when the mouse is over a particular palette, the {paletteer} function is displayed in an information bubble.

There are a few different ways of doing that from just html or css to JS. Some of the suggestions here seem like they'd be reasonably easy to implement, depending on how you built the site: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11022843/add-hover-text-without-javascript-like-we-hover-on-a-users-reputation.

Again, thanks!

remove NineteenEightyR cran code

NineteenEightyR isn't on cran at the moment

Include dichromat package

stored in dichromat::colorschemes as named list.