Palettable

3.3.3 · active · verified Sun Apr 12

Palettable is a Python library that provides a comprehensive collection of color palettes, including those from Colorbrewer2, Tableau, CartoColors, cmocean, and more. It is written in pure Python with no external dependencies and can supply color maps for Matplotlib or be used for web applications. The current version is 3.3.3, with an irregular release cadence and maintenance releases as needed.

Warnings

breaking The library was renamed from `brewer2mpl` to `palettable` in version 2.0.0 (released March 2015). Code using `import brewer2mpl` will fail.
Fix: Update imports to `from palettable.<source>.<type> import <PaletteName>_<NumColors>`.
gotcha Palettes are organized into submodules (e.g., `palettable.colorbrewer.qualitative`, `palettable.matplotlib`) and follow a naming convention of `<Name>_<number of colors>` (e.g., `Dark2_7`). Reversed palettes have an `_r` suffix.
Fix: Refer to the documentation or use tab-completion to find the exact palette names and their available color counts.
gotcha While Palettable itself has no external *core* dependencies, certain visualization and display functions (e.g., `show_as_blocks`, `show_discrete_image`, `save_continuous_image`) require `ipythonblocks` or `matplotlib` to be installed separately.
Fix: Install `matplotlib` (for colormaps and image saving) or `ipythonblocks` (for IPython block displays) if you intend to use these specific features (`pip install matplotlib ipythonblocks`).

Install

pip install palettable Install with pip

Imports

Dark2_7
```
from palettable.colorbrewer.qualitative import Dark2_7
```
The library was renamed from `brewer2mpl` to `palettable` in version 2.0.0.
Viridis_256
```
from palettable.matplotlib import Viridis_256
```
Palettes are imported directly by their name and number of colors from specific submodules (e.g., `colorbrewer.qualitative`, `matplotlib`).

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to import a specific color palette, access its various color representations (RGB 0-255, Hex, Matplotlib-compatible RGB 0-1), and optionally visualize it using Matplotlib.

from palettable.colorbrewer.qualitative import Dark2_7

# Access basic palette information
print(f"Palette Name: {Dark2_7.name}")
print(f"Number of Colors: {Dark2_7.number}")

# Get colors in different formats
print(f"RGB colors (0-255): {Dark2_7.colors}")
print(f"Hex colors: {Dark2_7.hex_colors}")
print(f"Matplotlib-compatible RGB (0-1): {Dark2_7.mpl_colors}")

# Example: Using with Matplotlib (requires matplotlib installed)
try:
    import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
    from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap

    # Create a matplotlib colormap from the palette
    cmap = ListedColormap(Dark2_7.mpl_colors)

    # Display the palette as an image
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(6, 1))
    ax.imshow([[i for i in range(Dark2_7.number)]], cmap=cmap, aspect='auto')
    ax.set_axis_off()
    ax.set_title(f"{Dark2_7.name} ({Dark2_7.number} colors)")
    plt.show()
except ImportError:
    print("Matplotlib not installed. Skipping visualization example.")

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