Harmonic Colormaps for Volume Visualization

Color design forms a crucial part in visual aesthetics, and it has been shown that a visually aesthetic visualization will be looked at more carefully. An important role plays here the choice of a colormap that is composed of harmonic colors. This paper presents an interface that allows users to choose harmonic colors in volume visualization applications. In addition, it describes mechanisms by which non-harmonic colormaps can be converted to harmonic ones, but keeping lightness constant to preserve the original contrast relationships. Finally, we also show how harmonic colors can be used for the highlighting of important volume features.