Many colour maps provided by vendors have highly uneven perceptual contrast
over their range. It is not uncommon for colour maps to have perceptual flat
spots that can hide a feature as large as one tenth of the total data range.
Colour maps may also have perceptual discontinuities that induce the appearance
of false features. Previous work in the design of perceptually uniform colour
maps has mostly failed to recognise that CIELAB space is only designed to be
perceptually uniform at very low spatial frequencies. The most important factor
in designing a colour map is to ensure that the magnitude of the incremental
change in perceptual lightness of the colours is uniform. The specific
requirements for linear, diverging, rainbow and cyclic colour maps are
developed in detail. To support this work two test images for evaluating colour
maps are presented. The use of colour maps in combination with relief shading
is considered and the conditions under which colour can enhance or disrupt
relief shading are identified. Finally, a set of new basis colours for the
construction of ternary images are presented. Unlike the RGB primaries these
basis colours produce images whereby the salience of structures are consistent
irrespective of the assignment of basis colours to data channels.

本文提出了设计色彩映射的特定要求和新的基色，以保证色彩映射在感知上的一致性，并呈现了两种测试图像进行色彩映射的评估。讨论了色彩映射与浮雕阴影的搭配情况，有机会增强或破坏浮雕阴影效果。提供了新的基色构建三元图像，且图像结构的显著性不受基色分配的影响。