# 1.12 Color maps

Color maps provide a graphical means of producing two-dimensional representations of surfaces, or equivalently of producing maps of the values of functions of two variables. Each point in the plane is assigned a color which indicates the value associated with that point. In this section, we refer to the third coordinate as rather than , to distinguish it from the third axes of three-dimensional plots1.

In the following simple example, a color map of the complex argument of the Riemann zeta function is produced, taking the plane to be an Argand plane, with being the real axis, and being the imaginary axis. Each point in the plane has an associated value of .

`set numerics complex`
`set nokey`
`set size 8 square`
`set samples grid 400x400`
`set c1range[-pi:pi]`
`set c1format r"$%spi$"%(c/pi)`
`plot [-20:6][-13:13] arg(zeta(x+i*y)) with colormap`

The `set c1range` command sets the range of values of to be assigned colors between black and white. By default, the lowest and highest values of found in the color map is assigned to black and white.

The `set c1format` command controls the format of the axis labels placed along the color scale bar on the right-hand side of the plot. In this case, they are marked as multiples of .

The `set samples grid` command sets the dimensions of the grid of samples – or pixels – used to render the color map. If either value is replaced with an asterisk (`*`) then the current number of samples set in the `set samples` command is substituted.

If a data file is supplied to the `colormap` plot style, then the datapoints need not lie on the specified regular grid, but are first re-sampled onto this grid using the interpolation method specified using the `set samples interpolate` command (see Section 5.7). Three methods are available. `nearestNeighbor` uses the value of associated with the datapoint closest to each grid point, producing color maps which look like Voronoi diagrams. `inverseSquare` interpolation returns a weighted average of the supplied data points, using the inverse squares of their distances from each grid point as weights. `monaghanLattanzio` interpolation uses the weighting function of Monaghan & Lattanzio (1985) which is described further in Section 5.7).

In the following example, a color map of a quadrupole is produced using four input datapoints:

`set nokey`
`set size 8 square`
`set samples grid 200x200 interpolate inverseSquare`
`plot [-4:4][-4:4] ’–’ with colormap`
`-1 -1 1`
`-1 1 -1`
`1 -1 -1`
`1 1 1`
`END`

- 1.12.1 Custom color mappings
- 1.12.2 Color scale bars

Footnotes

1. When color maps are plotted on three-dimensional graphs, they appear in a flat plane on one of the back faces of the plot selected using the `axes` modifier to the `plot` command, and the -axis associated with each are entirely independent of the plot’s -axis.