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plotting - What are the standard colors for plots in Mathematica 10?




Mathematica 10 release appears to have changed the default styling of plots: the most visible changes are thicker lines and different default colors.


Thus, answers to this stackoverflow question are only valid for Mathematica < 10. For example, plots in this code will not give identical output in Mathematica 10, although they do in version 9:


fns = Table[x^n, {n, 0, 5}];
Plot[fns, {x, -1, 1}, PlotStyle -> ColorData[1, "ColorList"]]
Plot[fns, {x, -1, 1}]

enter image description here


So, my question is: what is the new way of getting the default colors to reproduce for own uses?



Answer




The colors alone are indexed color scheme #97:


ColorData[97, "ColorList"]

enter image description here


Update: further digging in reveals these PlotTheme indexed color relationships:


{"Default"   -> 97,  "Earth"       -> 98,  "Garnet"      -> 99,  "Opal"       -> 100,
 "Sapphire"  -> 101, "Steel"       -> 102, "Sunrise"     -> 103, "Textbook"   -> 104,
 "Water"     -> 105, "BoldColor"   -> 106, "CoolColor"   -> 107, "DarkColor"  -> 108,
 "MarketingColor" -> 109, "NeonColor" -> 109, "PastelColor" -> 110, "RoyalColor" -> 111,
 "VibrantColor"   -> 112, "WarmColor" -> 113};


The colors are returned as plain RGBColor expressions; the colored squares are merely a formatting directive. You can still see the numeric data with:


ColorData[97, "ColorList"] // InputForm


{RGBColor[0.368417, 0.506779, 0.709798], . . .,
 RGBColor[0.28026441037696703, 0.715, 0.4292089322474965]}

You can get a somewhat nicer (rounded decimal) display using standard output by blocking the formatting rules for RGBColor using Defer:


Defer[RGBColor] @@@ ColorData[97, "ColorList"] // Column



RGBColor[0.368417, 0.506779, 0.709798]
. . .
RGBColor[0.280264, 0.715, 0.429209]

To get full styling information for the default and other Themes see:



For example:


Charting`ResolvePlotTheme[Automatic, Plot]


enter image description here


(Actually Automatic doesn't seem to be significant here as I get the same thing using 1 or Pi or "" in its place; apparently anything but another defined Theme.)


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