Assign colors to vector of group labels

Assign colors to vector of group labels

group2colors(
  x,
  alpha = 1,
  colorFunc = rainbowJam,
  colorSub = NULL,
  sortFunc = jamba::mixedSort,
  useGradient = FALSE,
  verbose = FALSE,
  ...
)

Arguments

x

character or factor vector representing group membership.

alpha

numerical value indicating the alpha transparency to apply to the output colors, scaled from 0 (fully transparent) to 1 (no transparency).

colorFunc

function whose first parameter is the number of colors to return, and where ... is passed for additional parameters as needed. By default it uses colorjam::rainbowJam().

colorSub

optional named vector of colors, whose names must match all entries in x. This vector is used to re-apply colors which have already been assigned to the labels in x.

sortFunc

function to use when sorting character or numeric input in x, by default jamba::mixedSort(). When input x is a factor, the factor levels are maintained in the same order.

useGradient

logical indicating whether to apply a light-to-dark gradient to repeated colors, for example to distinguish multiple replicates of a group.

verbose

logical indicating whether to print verbose output.

...

additional parameters are passed to colorFunc

Details

This function takes a character or factor vector as input, then assigns categorical colors to each label using colorFunc, by default rainbowJam().

If a previous set of colors has already been defined, the parameter colorSub is intended to maintain that same set of colors. However, all input values in x must be present in the names(colorSub) otherwise all colors are reassigned.

In future, this function will maintain a partial set of colors, while assigning colors with maximum visible differences from the existing colors.

See also

Other colorjam core: blend_colors(), closestRcolor(), closest_named_color(), color_complement(), colors_to_df(), rainbowJam(), sort_colors(), subset_colors()

Other colorjam assignment: col_div_xf(), col_linear_xf(), matrix2heatColors(), rainbowJamMulti(), vals2colorLevels(), vibrant_color_by_hue()

Examples

abcde <- group2colors(letters[1:5]);
aabbccddee <- group2colors(rep(letters[1:5], each=2));
aaabbcccccdeeee <- group2colors(rep(letters[1:5], c(3,2,5,1,4)));
aaabbcccccdeeee2 <- group2colors(rep(letters[1:5], c(3,2,5,1,4)), useGradient=TRUE);

jamba::showColors(list(abcde=abcde,
   aabbccddee=aabbccddee,
   aaabbcccccdeeee=aaabbcccccdeeee,
   aaabbcccccdeeee2=aaabbcccccdeeee2));