Installation

devtools::install_github("jacintak/colRoz")

colRoz works with base R and ggplot2 because it is a palette generator and doesn’t have a built in ggplot palette function.

1. List of palettes

The oz_palettes function contains the list of palettes available. Individual palettes are gouped by theme in a list. The oz_palettes variable is a list of these collated lists.

names(oz_palettes) # See all palette themes
 [1] "warramaba"  "lizards"    "landscapes" "birds"      "frogs"     
 [6] "snakes"     "plants"     "fish"       "inverts"    "mammals"   
names(oz_palettes$lizards) # See all lizard palettes
 [1] "c.decresii"    "c.kingii"      "e.leuraensis"  "i.lesueurii"  
 [5] "l.boydii"      "m.horridus"    "m.horridus2"   "t.nigrolutea" 
 [9] "v.acanthurus"  "v.pilbarensis" "n.levis"       "s.spinigerus" 
[13] "e.kingii"     

We can call a specific list using subsetting rules for lists.

oz_palettes[["warramaba"]][["whitei"]] # Subset the palette for Warramaba whitei, format: [[theme list]][[palette list]]
     [,1]      [,2]      [,3]      [,4]      [,5]      [,6]     
[1,] "#E5A430" "#9C7210" "#D7A8B8" "#BAB24F" "#392821" "#9B391B"
[2,] "1"       "3"       "6"       "5"       "4"       "2"      
oz_palettes$warramaba$whitei # does the same as above but using list names
     [,1]      [,2]      [,3]      [,4]      [,5]      [,6]     
[1,] "#E5A430" "#9C7210" "#D7A8B8" "#BAB24F" "#392821" "#9B391B"
[2,] "1"       "3"       "6"       "5"       "4"       "2"      

palette <- list(
pal1 = rbind(c(<hex codes>), c(<order of discrete colours>))
)

2. Defining and using a palette

The palettes in this package are set as above. The main function is the palette generator. It acts as a housekeeping function to allow R to interpret the desired palette for plotting. The behaviour of this function depends on whether a discrete or continuous palette is desired and the number of colours requested.

If a discrete palette of 3 colours is desired, then the function will chose the subset of 3 colours to be included from the full option of colours in a palette. The chosen order of these colours is hard coded in the list of palette.

Note there is no need to tell colRoz what theme the palette you want is in. Type in the palette name and colRoz will search the entire oz_palette list

pal <- colRoz_pal(name = "ngadju", n = 3, type = "discrete")
# a palette of only 3 colours

library(ggplot2)
ggplot(iris, aes(Petal.Width, Petal.Length , colour=Species)) +
geom_point() +
scale_colour_manual(values = pal) +
theme_classic()

If a continuous palette is desired, then the function will use the function colorRampPalette in the grDevices package (included in R) to generate a gradient of colours between the first and last colour in the desired palette.

"continuous" palettes are generated by default if the type argument is left blank. In ggplot2, use the function scale_colour_gradientn to set the continuous scale.

pal <- colRoz_pal(name = "ngadju", n = 50, type = "continuous")

ggplot(iris, aes(Petal.Width, Sepal.Length , colour=Petal.Length)) +
geom_point() +
scale_colour_gradientn(colours = pal) +
theme_classic()

***

3. Visualise a palette

The function to plot the palette is only for graphing. Information is taken about the number of colours to plot from the desired palette and the palette is plotted. The name of the palette is shown.

print_palette(colRoz_pal("c.decresii"))# if empty, all colours are shown

print_palette(colRoz_pal("c.decresii", type = "discrete", n = 4))

print_palette(colRoz_pal("c.decresii", type = "continuous", n = 30))

Palettes

colRoz has a number of palettes sorted by categories:

• Birds
• Fish
• Frogs
• Inverts
• Landscapes
• Lizards
• Mammals
• Plants
• Snakes
• Warramaba grasshoppers