Table 1.

Feature comparison for several functions and packages used for creating heat maps. “x” indicates the tool natively includes that feature. A function or package name indicates that the functionality is easily obtainable using that function or package.

Package or function name	Color scale	Irregular grid	Nongridded data	Shared color scale	Individual color scales	Coordinate projection
image
filled.contour	x
fields	x	x			par
lattice	x			x	gridExtra
sp	x			x	gridExtra	x
ggplot2	x			x	gridExtra	x
autoimage	x	x	x	x	x	x