Parrot LUT: Scientific Colormaps for Data Visualization

Joachim Goedhart from the University of Amsterdam designed the 'parrot' lookup table for scientific visualization. The collection includes several other colormaps like 'morgenstemning', 'inferno', and 'pseudocolorMM', each with documented origins and licenses. These colormaps are intended for displaying data in ways compatible with color perception deficiencies.

Use Cases

• Applying perceptually uniform colormaps to scientific images based on the described 'inferno' and 'viridis' maps
• Designing visualizations for colorblind audiences based on the 'morgenstemning' LUT designed for red-green deficiencies
• Converting or comparing color mapping schemes between software like ImageJ, FIJI, and MetaMorph based on the included 'royal', 'Fire', and 'pseudocolorMM' LUTs

Strengths

• Includes colormaps with specific academic citations, such as 'morgenstemning' from Optics Express, 2013
• Provides clear licensing information, with some maps under CC0 and others under GNU GPLv3
• Documents the original creator and software source for each colormap, like 'inferno' by Stéfan van der Walt and Nathaniel Smith

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment

Provenance

Source

University of Amsterdam

Collection Method

Collected from academic publications and software tools.