2d color gradient plot in R

Question

I want to produce a 2d color gradient rectangle like the ones in the picture below on the right hand side. How can I do this in R? Using colorRamp or RColorBrewer or other functions/packages I can produce nice 1D dolor ramps. But how do I do this for 2D including several colors in the corners, like e.g. the upper right rectangle?

What I want to get is e.g. the following two gradient types:

BTY: I completely forgot to mention that I found the above chart here (produced by Luca Fenu).

Answer 1

Thanks for commenting on my post - I'm glad it generated some discussion. Here's a minimal code to achieve the plots on the upper right - I'm sure there's other more efficient ways to do it... But this works without need for other libraries, and should be easy enough to follow... you can change saturation and alpha blending by playing with the max_sat and alpha_default variables...

#define extremes of the color ramps
rampk2r <- colorRampPalette(c(rgb(  0/255,   0/255,   0/255), rgb(218/255,   0/255,   0/255)))
rampk2g <- colorRampPalette(c(rgb(  0/255,   0/255,   0/255), rgb(  0/255, 218/255,   0/255)))

# stupid function to reduce every span of numbers to the 0,1 interval
prop <- function(x, lo=0, hi=100) {
    if (is.na(x)) {NA}
    else{
        min(lo,hi)+x*(max(lo,hi)-min(lo,hi))
    }
}

rangepropCA<-c(0,20)
rangepropCB<-c(0,20)

# define some default variables
if (!exists('alpha_default')) {alpha_default<-1} # opaque colors by default
if (!exists('palette_l')) {palette_l<-50} # how many steps in the palette
if (!exists('max_sat')) {max_sat<-200} # maximum saturation
colorpalette<-0:palette_l*(max_sat/255)/palette_l # her's finally the palette...

# first of all make an empy plot
plot(NULL, xlim=rangepropCA, ylim=rangepropCB, log='', xaxt='n', yaxt='n', xlab='prop A', ylab='prop B', bty='n', main='color field');
# then fill it up with rectangles each colored differently
for (m in 1:palette_l) {
    for (n in 1:palette_l) {
        rgbcol<-rgb(colorpalette[n],colorpalette[m],0, alpha_default);
        rect(xleft= prop(x=(n-1)/(palette_l),rangepropCA[1],rangepropCA[2]) 
            ,xright= prop(x=(n)/(palette_l),rangepropCA[1],rangepropCA[2])
            ,ytop= prop(x=(m-1)/(palette_l),rangepropCB[1],rangepropCB[2]) 
            ,ybottom= prop(x=(m)/(palette_l),rangepropCB[1],rangepropCB[2])
            ,col=rgbcol
            ,border="transparent"
        )
    }
}
# done!