Fig 5. Different color maps used for visualizing the same pseudo-data.

(A) The sequential "rainbow" color map (panel B) is frequently used and thus easy to interpret but poorly conveys absolute values (cf. the "rays" in yellow and cyan) and does not preserve information well if printed in gray scale (simulated by conversion to gray scale in panel E). The sequential "viridis" color map (panel C) is a perceptually uniform color map avoiding such artifacts and translating better to gray scale (panel F). The divergent color map from blue via white to red (panel D) is useful if the direction and the extent of deviation from a central value is of interest and loses only the direction information when converted to gray scale (panel G).