Today I Learned

Cubehelix, not Rainbow

Here in a series of posts by MYCARTA, the author Matteo analyzed the drawbacks of rainbow. Problems such as non-monotonic changing of brightness can cause serious problems for figures and plots.

Cubehelix comes to the rescue. Other alternatives can also be very helpful, such as viridis.

D3.js

D3.js has a cubehelix plugin that contains the cubehelix color palette.

Python

Many python modules has implemented cubehelix. Such as jradavenport/cubehelix.

Mathematica

Here is the cubehelix code from JasonB@stackexchange. He also made it avaible online through <<"http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=sqYFdrkY";

Download the Mathematica notebook here.