pychromatic

A color palette manager and matplotlib plotting utility for Python.

• Free software: GNU General Public License v3
• Documentation: https://pyscal.github.io/pychromatic/

Features

• 22 curated color palettes including 4 colorblind-friendly sets (Okabe–Ito, Tableau 10, Tol Bright, Tol Muted)
• Color manipulation: brighten, darken, mix, find intermediates
• Color format conversions: hex, RGB, HLS
• Sample any matplotlib colormap with get_color(0.5, 'viridis')
• Generate matplotlib colormaps from any palette with palette_cmap()
• Opinionated matplotlib plot templates (Multiplot, BrokenAxes)
• chromatify decorator for auto-styling matplotlib subplots
• Rich terminal color preview via Color.display()

Installation

$ pip install pychromatic

For development:

$ pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quick Start

from pychromatic import Palette, Color

# Use a built-in palette
p = Palette('default')
p.show()

# Work with individual colors
c = Color('#1976d2', name='blue')
c.brighten(0.2)
c.display()

# Sample a matplotlib colormap
from pychromatic import get_color, palette_cmap
hex_color = get_color(0.5, 'viridis')   # '#21918c'

# Build a cmap from any pychromatic palette
cmap = palette_cmap('rainbow')

Colorblind-Friendly Palettes

pychromatic ships four accessibility-first palettes that can be used as Palette objects or imported directly as plain dictionaries:

from pychromatic import okabe_ito, tableau10, tol_bright, tol_muted

# Use as a Palette object
p = Palette('okabe_ito')
p.show()

# Or grab individual hex values from the dict
print(okabe_ito['orange'])   # '#E69F00'
print(tableau10['teal'])     # '#76B7B2'

Available colorblind palettes:

• okabe_ito — 8 colors from the Okabe & Ito (2008) universal palette
• tableau10 — 10 colors from Tableau's default categorical palette
• tol_bright — 7 high-contrast colors from Paul Tol's bright scheme
• tol_muted — 9 low-chroma colors from Paul Tol's muted scheme

Available Palettes

Name	Colors	Type
default	15	qualitative
pastels	12	qualitative
basics	9	qualitative
set1_dark	8	qualitative
set1_pastel	8	qualitative
excel	7	qualitative
set2 – set7	5	qualitative
google	5	qualitative
dark	5	qualitative
earth	5	qualitative
rainbow	5	sequential
accent	15	qualitative
okabe_ito	8	qualitative (colorblind-safe)
tableau10	10	qualitative (colorblind-safe)
tol_bright	7	qualitative (colorblind-safe)
tol_muted	9	qualitative (colorblind-safe)