Generate maximally perceptually-distinct colors

Version 1.2.0.0 (3.42 KB) by Tim Holy
Choose a set of n colors that can be readily distinguished from each other
34.9K Downloads
Updated 7 Feb 2011

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When plotting a set of lines, you may want to distinguish them by color. By default, Matlab chooses a small set of colors and cycles among them, and so if you have more than a few lines there will be confusion about which line is which. To fix this problem, one would want to be able to pick a much larger set of distinct colors, where the number of colors equals or exceeds the number of lines you want to plot. Because our ability to distinguish among colors has limits, one should choose these colors to be "maximally perceptually distinguishable."

This function generates a set of colors which are distinguishable by reference to the "Lab" color space, which more closely matches human color perception than RGB. Given an initial large list of possible colors, it iteratively chooses the entry in the list that is farthest (in Lab space) from all previously-chosen entries.

Cite As

Tim Holy (2024). Generate maximally perceptually-distinct colors (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29702-generate-maximally-perceptually-distinct-colors), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

MATLAB Release Compatibility
Created with R2010a
Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS Linux

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Version Published Release Notes
1.2.0.0

As suggested by Il, I added the ability to avoid multiple background colors.

1.1.0.0

I have added the option for the user to supply a function handle to any desired colorspace conversion function. One application is to use the file exchange's "colorspace" set of tools. In this case, you no longer need the image processing toolbox.

1.0.0.0