Color Palette Assistant
For Science Visuals
Find Effective Colors For Your Scientific Figures
Selecting the right colors to communicate your science can make your work more engaging. But, picking the wrong ones can bring confusion or distort your data. This Color Palette Assistant helps demystify the selection process! Shuffle your options or grab colors from your own imagine, and preview it on a mock figure. All colors are sRGB for digital use and follow color-blindness and WAG web accessibility standards.
Choose 2 to 6. Add markers and direct labels so color is not doing all the work.
Keeps only palettes whose colors stay distinct under protan, deutan and tritan simulation.
Each color needs at least 3:1 contrast against it to count as legible in a chart.
Pull colors from your own microscopy, field or instrument image. The photo never leaves your browser.
See it on a figure
References & further reading
- Sayo Studio: Using color effectively in scientific figures
- BYU Bioapps: Colorblind Image Tester, test your finished figure for red-green accessibility
- PubMed Central, PMC7040535: color in digital journals (RGB pixels on screen)
- AJE: Using Color in Your Manuscript Figures (PDF)
- Colour Blind Awareness: Types of colour blindness
- Canva: Color wheel, monochromatic, analogous and complementary schemes
- WCAG.com: What is WCAG?, plus the WCAG 2.1 non-text contrast criterion (1.4.11, 3:1) used for chart elements
- WebAIM: Contrast Checker
- Machado, Oliveira & Fernandes (2009): A physiologically-based model for simulation of color vision deficiency, the simulation model used here
Ready to take your visuals to the next level?
If you’re preparing your figures for publication or presentations and want visual strategy guidance, get in touch or explore my portfolio.