Geophysics SIG Meeting – October (Online)

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Speaker: Lindsey Smith, Geophysicist at BP

Title: The dangers of the default colourmap

Abstract

Visualization of seismic datasets and their attributes is fundamental to our interpretation and analysis of the subsurface, and how we communicate our understanding to others. However, in many visualization toolkits the default colourmaps have not been designed with accuracy in mind. In many cases they cause visual distortion of the data, hide detail in some areas and create artefacts and distracting contours in others. In the case of rainbow colourmaps, they also contain both red and green at similar luminosity, and therefore are not inclusive for those with Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD). Choosing a scientific (also known as perceptually uniform) colourmap allows visualization with accurate representation of the regular interval relationship in scientific data – a scientific colourmap allows us to see all the detail in our data equally well, without visual error. Simple colourmap analysis and comparison plots of real data examples can help demonstrate the dangers of the default colourmap and the benefits of a scientific alternative. Changing the default colourmap will not only improve the efficiency and accuracy of our data analysis, but it will also improve the effectiveness of our communication to others as scientific colourmaps are not only accurate, but intuitive and accessible for all.

Dr Lindsey Smith is a geophysicist with 17 years experience of working for bp in a range of North Sea assets and central bp roles in both interpretation and seismic analysis.

In 2017, Lindsey’s colleagues and her read an article on Matt Hall’s Agile Scientific blog titled No more rainbows. Since then they have been increasingly interested in how colour is used for data visualization in geosciences and in particular how they improve on the default colourmaps available in our visualization toolkits.