Set or View the Graphics Palette

Description

View or manipulate the color palette which is used when a col= has a numeric index.

Usage

palette(value)

Arguments

Details

If value has length 1, it is taken to be the name of a built in color palette. If value has length greater than 1 it is assumed to contain a description of the colors which are to make up the new palette (either by name or by RGB levels).

If value is omitted or has length 0, no change is made the current palette.

Currently, the only built-in palette is "default".

Value

The palette which was in effect. This is invisible unless the argument is omitted.

See Also

colors for the vector of built-in named colors; hsv, gray, rainbow, terrain.colors,... to construct colors.

adjustcolor, e.g., for tweaking existing palettes; colorRamp to interpolate colors, making custom palettes; col2rgb for translating colors to RGB 3-vectors.

Examples

require(graphics)

palette()               # obtain the current palette
palette(rainbow(6))     # six color rainbow

(palette(gray(seq(0,.9,len=25)))) # gray scales; print old palette
matplot(outer(1:100,1:30), type='l', lty=1,lwd=2, col=1:30,
        main = "Gray Scales Palette",
        sub = "palette(gray(seq(0,.9,len=25)))")
palette("default")      # reset back to the default

## on a device where alpha-transparency is supported,
##  use 'alpha = 0.3' transparency with the default palette :
mycols <- adjustcolor(palette(), alpha.f = 0.3)
opal <- palette(mycols)
x <- rnorm(1000); xy <- cbind(x, 3*x + rnorm(1000))
plot (xy, lwd=2,
       main = "Alpha-Transparency Palette\n alpha = 0.3")
xy[,1] <- -xy[,1]
points(xy, col=8, pch=16, cex = 1.5)
palette("default")