Spectral

Summary

Spectral is a diverging colormap from matplotlib. Two arms meet at a pivot of lightness 0.98, hue sweeps 281° from red to violet, and order holds under all three colorblind simulations.

ColorBrewer 2.0 Spectral; 11 anchor stops.

Perceptual profile (OKLCh)

• Lightness: 0.449 → 0.484 (range 0.535, min 0.449, max 0.984); non-monotonic; midpoint 0.984
• Chroma: min 0.082, max 0.186, mean 0.123
• Hue: 7.8° → 289.0° (span 281.2°), path monotonic-cw; quadrants: red, orange, yellow, chartreuse, green, mint, cyan, azure, blue, violet
• Pivot: t 0.502, lightness 0.984, hue jump 6.2°, smoothness 0.509
• Endpoint temperature: warm → cool
• Perceptual ΔE: total 174.6, mean/step 0.684, max step 1.430, smoothness 0.577, speed 0.684

Colorblind safety (ΔE under simulated CVD)

• Protanopia: ΔE total 149.3; preserves order: yes
• Deuteranopia: ΔE total 132.2; preserves order: yes
• Tritanopia: ΔE total 147.2; preserves order: yes

Related

• Family: matplotlib
• Source: ColorBrewer 2.0 (Brewer & Harrower) via matplotlib
• Similar diverging maps: RdBu
• All colormaps