Balance

Summary

Balance is a diverging colormap from cmocean. Two arms meet at a pivot of lightness 0.95, hue sweeps 179° from violet to red, and order holds under all three colorblind simulations.

Designed for SST anomaly. Sourced from cmocean/rgb/balance-rgb.txt.

Perceptual profile (OKLCh)

• Lightness: 0.248 → 0.239 (range 0.708, min 0.239, max 0.947); non-monotonic; midpoint 0.947
• Chroma: min 0.001, max 0.177, mean 0.097
• Hue: 274.8° → 16.1° (span 179.3°), path folded; quadrants: violet, blue, azure, orange, red
• Pivot: t 0.498, lightness 0.947, hue jump 97.2°, smoothness 0.529
• Endpoint temperature: cool → warm
• Perceptual ΔE: total 171.3, mean/step 0.672, max step 0.888, smoothness 0.892, speed 0.672

Colorblind safety (ΔE under simulated CVD)

• Protanopia: ΔE total 155.0; preserves order: yes
• Deuteranopia: ΔE total 153.4; preserves order: yes
• Tritanopia: ΔE total 166.1; preserves order: yes

Related

• Family: cmocean
• Source: Thyng et al. 2016, Oceanography 29(3):9–13
• Similar diverging maps: Curl, Delta, Diff, Tarn
• How sharp should the pivot be?
• All colormaps