Standards for false and pseudo-color imagery?

June 21, 2007 11:05 AM

In data graphing and visualization, are there any existing standards for false-color or pseudo-color images?
posted by fake to Science & Nature (7 answers total)

I have no idea if this is what you mean, but I know when you're doing 4-band remote sensing, the standard set-up is:
Band 2 (green) - blue
Band 3 (red) - green
Band 4 (IR) - red
posted by nekton at 1:15 PM on June 21, 2007

Response by poster: That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, but I'm hoping for some docs/spec sheets that describe the standards -- if they exist.

I'm graphing psychophysical data for neuroscience research, and so far, the best answers I can find are things like "I just adjust colors to show the data the best". In the end, if I can't find much else, I will design some perceptually motivated false-color/pseudocolor schemes.
posted by fake at 1:35 PM on June 21, 2007

My only advice would be to look at what's been published and try to follow those examples. That's how these things get started anyway.
posted by devilsbrigade at 1:42 PM on June 21, 2007

Response by poster: I appreciate the advice, devilsbrigade, but that's exactly the opposite of what I'm trying to do.
posted by fake at 2:42 PM on June 21, 2007

"I just adjust colors to show the data the best" could be interpreted as histogram stretching.

I don't think there would be much point of finding the original paper on false colour images to prove that they are valuable, but you certainly could hunt it down. It is an accepted standard method of data visualization, especially with remotely sensed photos / images.
posted by maxpower at 4:49 PM on June 21, 2007

Perhaps you could check around the NASA site? Between dealing with a lot of false colour stuff and being a government agency, they probably have a standard somewhere. (I would search myself but someone who has a better understanding [you] could do a better job.)
posted by anaelith at 7:36 PM on June 21, 2007

Response by poster: I don't think there would be much point of finding the original paper on false colour images to prove that they are valuable, but you certainly could hunt it down.

I am not trying to prove that false-color images are valuable. I am trying (still trying, actually) to locate standards which describe color schemes for various datatypes. See nekton's answer for an example.
posted by fake at 9:33 PM on June 23, 2007