Choosing Colormaps

From the matplotlib documentation:

The idea behind choosing a good colormap is to find a good representation in 3D colorspace for your data set. The best colormap for any given data set depends on many things including:

• Whether representing form or metric data 

• Your knowledge of the data set (e.g., is there a critical value from which the other values deviate?)

• If there is an intuitive color scheme for the parameter you are plotting

• If there is a standard in the field the audience may be expecting

For many applications, a perceptual colormap is the best choice — one in which equal steps in data are perceived as equal steps in the color space. Researchers have found that the human brain perceives changes in the lightness parameter as changes in the data much better than, for example, changes in hue. Therefore, colormaps which have monotonically increasing lightness through the colormap will be better interpreted by the viewer.

 http://matplotlib.org/users/colormaps.html


More info from IBM:

http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/lloydt/color/color.HTM