Color Brewer Addon
October 23 2010 |
4 comments
Is there a Color Brewer add on that makes using her color selection choices easier? My students like her color scales, but have to enter them as RGB values for each color in the scale. Am I missing an available add on that incorporates her schemes into the program more easily?
Mapping Center Answer:
Yes, there is a ColorBrewer add in that was developed by the National Cancer Institute.
You can download the tool from: http://gis.cancer.gov/tools/colortool/
Once you follow the installation steps, you will be able to access the tool by clicking on a Color Tool button in ArcMap.
The interface of the Color Tool allows you to select which feature class you want to classify, the field you want to use to classify the data, the classification method, what type of classification (sequential, qualitative, diverging), as well as the ability to select which ColorBrewer ramp you want to use.
When you click Apply, the map is updated to reflect your selections.
This is a great tool and you don't have to type in all of the RGB values!
On NCI's website, there is a link to email with questions about the ColorTool. They might be able to tell you if and when the ColorTool will be updated.
Second question is more basic: when will ESRI include the Colorbrewer styles as default styles in ArcGIS Desktop. The color ramps that have been shipped with ArcGIS for years are, well, terrible. I never use them. I tell my students not to use them. Now that there's been a vastly superior set of styles available for a couple of years (Colorbrewer), it seems crazy to me to force us all to manually edit RGB values one at a time in order to make use of Colorbrewer's hands-down better color choices. When will ESRI help us out on this front?
The Esri color ramps are actually based on ColorBrewer colors. Note that the color ramps in the style are not actually created a a continuous range of colors, which is how we created all our color ramps. This allows any color ramp to be used with a range of classes. The color ramps in the downloaded style must be used with the correct set of colors, if they are to be used properly. This, of course, increases the number of symbols you have to look through to find the one you want, and it gives the user a greater opportunity to select a color ramp that does not have an appropriate range of colors (f the correct ramp is not selected). Therefore, while our color ramps are based on ColorBrewer colors, they have been modified to be used more robustly and with more versatility and with our software. In my opinion, it is entirely safe to advise people to use the color ramps in the software, especially if they are not s used to working with or want to work with more complex symbology.
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