a curated guide to the best tools, resources and technologies for data visualization
An online tool to create color gradients, by specifying starting and stopping colors, number of steps and the shape of the color progression. The color space can be selected between cieluv and HSV, the progression can be visualized by graphs. (Contributed by: Laurent Jégou)
“Applying color theory to digital media and visualization. In this blog, we discuss various artists’ theories on color and how to apply these theories to creating digital media, visualizations and collage compositions. We discuss our own personal experiences with applying these theories.”
Vischeck is a way of showing you what things look like to someone who is color blind. You can try Vischeck online- either run Vischeck on your own image files or run Vischeck on a web page. You can also download programs to let you run it on your own computer.
With Web Color Data you can enter a URL and get a breakdown of the common colours used on the site in question, like a colour DNA. Useful for inspiration and monitoring trends in colour usage.
Creates an array of gradient colour options with different interpolations based on you colour selections.
“HCL Colorpicker lets you pick hue, chroma and lightness for data. Built off Gregor Aisch’s demo and color conversion library chroma.js.”
This site provides some information what the Hue-Chroma-Luminance (HCL) color space is, where the problems of the RGB color space are and how to use the HCL space for your personal work.
HTML color picker allows you to extract the precise colour code for a given pixel in a selected image (either uploaded or via URL). You will return the HEX value, RGB value and HSV value. Works just like the Photoshop eyedropper, but within your browser.
Colors for data scientists. Generate and refine palettes of optimally distinct colors.
A quick visual reference to every ColorBrewer scale; colors by Cynthia Brewer. Available in CSS and JS format, created by Mike Bostock.
The free Color Calculator to explore creative color options for your design project. Simply pick your base color(s), choose a color harmony, tweak/explore as needed, and see results. You’ll get a report of the hex, RGB, and CMYK color values for your project and see your colors applied to design samples. Share or print, rinse and repeat.
“Color Oracle is a free color blindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux. It takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by showing you in real time what people with common color vision impairments will see.”
“Colorbrewer 2.0 is an online tool designed to help people select good color schemes for maps and other graphics.”
With Colordot it is much easier to generate a consistent web color palette with just a few clicks. You should use colors consistently, so you have a common look and feel throughout your design. All the alternative proposals produced by Colordot derive from the same color and they all have a common denominator sharing hue, lightness or saturation values. This tool will let you find the exact value of darker shades of any color, not just something that ‘looks darker’. That will be a huge step towards professionally looking design.
“Translating Colours in Interactive Marketing Communications”. A useful (pdf) report that breaks down the cultural and country-specific responses to and meaning associated with a range of colours.
“CheckMyColours is a tool for checking foreground and background color combinations of all DOM elements and determining if they provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits.”
Chroma.js is a JavaScript library for working with colors in visualizations. In contrast to many similar libraries it supports advanced color models like CIE Lab and Hue-Chroma-Lightness which are helpful to overcome the traps of equidistant HSV colors. Also it includes support for color scales and the beautiful palettes by Cynthia Brewer.
“0to255 is a simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color. Perfect for hovers, borders, gradients, and more.”
Adobe Color, formerly known as Adobe Kuler, is an internet application from Adobe Systems that lets individuals try out, create and save various colour schemes, each of which consists of a set of five colours.
Generate and refine palettes of optimally distinct colors for visualization and for accessibility.
ColorBrewer is a simple yet essential tool that generates graduated color schemes for choropleth maps and beyond –– ensuring that color shades accurately represent data dimensions and conform to standards of accessibility for color-blind users.