The hardware and bandwidth for this mirror is donated by METANET, the Webhosting and Full Service-Cloud Provider.
If you wish to report a bug, or if you are interested in having us mirror your free-software or open-source project, please feel free to contact us at mirror[@]metanet.ch.

PortinariColors

Color palettes inspired by paintings of Candido Portinari in the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) collection and by his Guerra and Paz panels at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Fast to use, easy to plot with, and built for ggplot2.

Installation

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("rafalopespx/PortinariColors")

Quick start

library(PortinariColors)
library(ggplot2)

portinari.pal("cafe")                         # full palette as hex codes
portinari.pal("retirantes", n = 3)            # 3 colors: both ends and the center
portinari.pal("guerra_azul", n = 20, type = "continuous")  # interpolated

# Qualitative: unordered groups
ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg, colour = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_point(size = 3) +
  scale_color_portinari("cafe", name = "Cylinders")

# Sequential: ordered values
ggplot(faithfuld, aes(waiting, eruptions, fill = density)) +
  geom_raster() +
  scale_fill_portinari("guerra_azul", type = "continuous", direction = -1)

# Diverging: values around a midpoint
ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg, colour = mpg - mean(mpg))) +
  geom_point(size = 3) +
  scale_color_portinari("guerra", type = "continuous")

Discrete palettes pick colors to suit the palette style: the most distinct colors for qualitative palettes, evenly spaced steps for sequential palettes, and balanced steps either side of the light center for diverging palettes. Continuous palettes interpolate the full palette in CIELAB.

Main functions

Function	Purpose
`portinari.pal()`	Get a palette as hex colors (discrete or continuous)
`scale_color_portinari()` / `scale_colour_portinari()`	`ggplot2` color scale
`scale_fill_portinari()`	`ggplot2` fill scale
`portinari.palettes()`	Table of palettes by style, with colorblind status
`portinari.works()`	The paintings behind each palette, with links
`portinari.cvd.check()`	Colorblind simulation for a palette
`show_portinari()`	Draw palettes as swatches

portinari.pal() and the scale functions share the same arguments: type = "discrete" | "continuous", direction = 1 | -1, and colorblind = TRUE | FALSE.

Palettes

Palette	Style	Colors	Colorblind-safe	Works
`cafe`	qualitative	6	all 6	Coffee Agricultural Worker; Saint Francis
`paz`	qualitative	8	4	Paz (Peace), UN Headquarters panel
`retirantes`	diverging	8	all 8	Northeastern Migrants; Dead Child; Bust of the Poet Felippe d’Oliveira; Mr. Queiroz Lima
`inah`	diverging	5	4	Portrait of Ináh Prudente de Moraes
`sofia`	diverging	5	3	Portrait of Sofia Cantalupo
`guerra`	diverging	9	all 9	Guerra (War), UN Headquarters panel
`guerra_azul`	sequential	6	all 6	Blue scale of Guerra
`paz_ouro`	sequential	4	all 4	Earth-to-gold run of Paz

See The paintings for images and links to every work, and Choosing a palette style for when to use each style.

Palettes are merged when they are too similar. Candidate palettes were compared by mean CIELAB distance. Two groups were merged this way: the migrant-series works with the ‘Felippe d’Oliveira bust’ and the ‘Queiroz Lima’ portrait, and the ‘Coffee Agricultural Worker’ with ‘Saint Francis’. guerra and paz are distinct from every other palette (closest: paz vs cafe, dE 18.9), so they stay separate. guerra_azul and paz_ouro are sequential subsets of the two panels and are kept on purpose: they serve a different kind of data rather than duplicating a palette.

Use colorblind = TRUE to keep only the colorblind-safe colors of a palette:

portinari.pal("inah", colorblind = TRUE)      # 4 safe colors
portinari.cvd.check("sofia")                  # see where the palette breaks down

Important: colors are estimates

The hex values are hand-estimated from the dominant tones of each painting. They were not sampled from the MASP images. guerra and paz follow published descriptions of the panels: Guerra as “a symphony in blue” of deep violet tones over light blues tending to pale citrine, with an orange-to-red counterpoint, and Paz as dominated by golden yellows. Treat them as a starting point. data-raw/extract_masp_palettes.R samples the originals when the MASP site is reachable, and data-raw/palette_selection.py reproduces the merge and colorblind analysis.

Colorblind safety

A palette is colorblind-safe for its first n colors when those colors stay at least CIE76 dE 10 apart under protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia simulation Machado et al., 2009. The simulation is in portinari.cvd.check().

Contributing

Add a palette by appending an entry to .portinari_palettes in R/palettes.R. Order the colors by priority, then set cvd_n by running portinari.cvd.check() on the new palette.

Credits

Works by Candido Portinari (1903-1962). Images and metadata are from the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo (MASP) collection. The palettes are an inspired interpretation, not an official MASP product.

The package API follows the conventions of MoMAColors and MetBrewer.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.