How to use viridis in matplotlib 1.4

Question

I want to use the colormap "viridis" (http://bids.github.io/colormap/), and I won't be updating to the development version 1.5 quite yet. Thus, I have downloaded colormaps.py from https://github.com/BIDS/colormap. Unfortunately, I'm not able to make it work. This is what I do:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.image as mpimg
import numpy as np

import colormaps as cmaps

img=mpimg.imread('stinkbug.png')
lum_img = np.flipud(img[:,:,0])

plt.set_cmap(cmaps.viridis)
imgplot = plt.pcolormesh(lum_img)

This gives me a ValueError, the traceback ending with,

ValueError: Colormap viridis is not recognized. Possible values are: Spectral, summer, coolwarm, ...

(And then the complete list of originally installed colormaps.)

Any thoughts on how to fix this issue?

Answer 1

To set viridis as your colormap using set_cmap, you must register it first:

import colormaps as cmaps
plt.register_cmap(name='viridis', cmap=cmaps.viridis)
plt.set_cmap(cmaps.viridis)

img=mpimg.imread('stinkbug.png')
lum_img = np.flipud(img[:,:,0])
imgplot = plt.pcolormesh(lum_img)

Answer 2

Rather than using set_cmap, which requires a matplotlib.colors.Colormap instance, you can set the cmap directly in the pcolormesh call

(cmaps.viridis is a matplotlib.colors.ListedColormap)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.image as mpimg
import numpy as np

import colormaps as cmaps

img=mpimg.imread('stinkbug.png')
lum_img = np.flipud(img[:,:,0])

imgplot = plt.pcolormesh(lum_img, cmap=cmaps.viridis)

Answer 3

What I did is to just copy the

_viridis_data = [[0.267004, 0.004874, 0.329415],
                 [0.268510, 0.009605, 0.335427],
                 [0.269944, 0.014625, 0.341379],
                 :
                 [0.983868, 0.904867, 0.136897],
                 [0.993248, 0.906157, 0.143936]]

from https://github.com/BIDS/colormap/blob/master/colormaps.py

and add:

from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap

viridis = ListedColormap(_viridis_data, name='viridis')

plt.register_cmap(name='viridis', cmap=viridis)
plt.set_cmap(viridis)