[comp.graphics] Best Colormap

bball@sisler.ucr.edu (alvaro monge) (08/02/90)

I was wondering if any of you out there can help on a couple of questions
I have in working with the Pixrect Libraries in Unix system (Sparc 1, and Sund 3/60's)

	1)  What is the best colormap that will give a fairly good pallette (sp?) of colors
		 i.e. most of the spectrum if possible.
		 
	2)	 The Sun 3/60 has 8 planes, so it can display 256 colors.  How do I get all of 
		 these colors on there.


Thanks for any help, if any of you out there are experts in Pixrect Libraries and would
like to share your experiences with me, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks to all.

Al (bball@ucrmath.ucr.edu)

shirley@m.cs.uiuc.edu (08/02/90)

There's some nice info on colormap design in an article by Colin Ware
in CG&A vol8, no 5 of '88.  The basic result he claimed (on the basis
of an experiment where users tried to read colors as numbers given
a color legend and a specific colored spot in a data field), was
that a color map that starts at black and goes to white while cycling
through color was best.  My experience says he is right for strictly
positive fields, but some fields should have color->black->color for
neg->zero->pos.

pete shirley