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📖 Website & interactive palette explorer: https://loukesio.github.io/ltc-color-palettes/

Install package

Install the package using the following commands 

# Install the released version from CRAN
install.packages("ltc")

# Or, if you want the latest development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("loukesio/ltc-color-palettes")

# and load it
library(ltc)

Palettes in action

Every palette in the package, shown across six chart types — a map, a Voronoi treemap, a heatmap, a bubble chart, a barplot and a streamgraph:

Try them yourself in the interactive palette explorer — switch between palettes, darken or brighten them, and check how they hold up under colour-vision deficiency.

A couple of examples of ltc palettes on real data. Every palette works as a discrete scale, a continuous scale, or a diverging one.

A discrete scale — life expectancy against income across the world in 2007, coloured by continent with the expevo palette:

And a continuous scale — estimated GDP per capita across Europe, drawn with the heatmap0 palette:

How can I use the ltc package?

Show all palettes 

library(ltc)
names(palettes)
#>  [1] "paloma"     "maya"       "dora"       "ploen"      "olga"      
#>  [6] "mterese"    "gaby"       "franscoise" "fernande"   "sylvie"    
#> [11] "expevo"     "minou"      "kiss"       "hat"        "reading"   
#> [16] "alger"      "trio1"      "trio2"      "trio3"      "trio4"     
#> [21] "heatmap0"   "pantone23"  "remains"    "midnight"   "lincoln"   
#> [26] "luminaries" "seafarer"   "shuggie"    "heatmap1"   "heatmap2"  
#> [31] "heatmap3"   "casa_natal"

Choose the palette you like and print it

  • choose it using the ltc command.
alger <- ltc("alger") #in this case you select alger
  • after choosing the palette print it using the pltc command!
plot(alger)

  • you can also print the palette you have chosen in a bird-shape, in here we are using dora 
library(ltc)
pantone23 <- ltc("pantone23")
bird(pantone23)

Created on 2023-09-03 with reprex v2.0.2

Adjust a palette — darken, brighten, or desaturate

Every palette can be tuned without leaving the package. adjust_ltc() darkens (negative amount) or lightens (positive amount) the colours, and desaturate_ltc() mutes them:

library(ltc)

adjust_ltc(maya, amount = -30)      # darker
adjust_ltc(maya, amount =  30)      # lighter
desaturate_ltc(maya, amount = 0.6)  # muted

# tune individual colours, or give each its own amount
adjust_ltc(maya, amount = -25, which = c(1, 4))
custom_adjust_ltc(maya, c(-40, -20, 0, 20, 40))

Check colour-vision accessibility

ltc_cvd() simulates how a palette looks to viewers with the three main types of colour-vision deficiency, so you can check that the colours stay distinct:

library(ltc)

ltc_cvd(maya)                     # normal + deuteranopia / protanopia / tritanopia
ltc_cvd("expevo", severity = 0.6) # milder simulation

Test how the palette looks like in plots…

  • Example 1 - Hexagon diagram
library(ggplot2)
library(ltc)
pal=ltc("heatmap0",10,"continuous")

ggplot(data.frame(x = rnorm(1e4), y = rnorm(1e4)), aes(x = x, y = y)) +
  geom_hex() +
  coord_fixed() +
  scale_fill_gradientn(colours = pal) +
  theme_void()

Created on 2023-09-03 with reprex v2.0.2

  • Example 2 - Histogram
library(ltc)
library(ggplot2)
pal=ltc("alger",5,"continuous")

ggplot(diamonds, aes(price, fill = cut)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 500, position = "fill") +
  scale_fill_manual(values = pal) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank())

Created on 2023-09-03 with reprex v2.0.2

Contributions

The ltc package is developed and maintained by Loukas Theodosiou (). For the palettes I drew inspiration from the drawings and life of Pablo Picasso as well as from the following books