Fix the Jet

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Information is not knowledge.

Information can be transformed into knowledge by consuming it in a way to understand patterns. One of the primary ways to consume large quantities of information is through pictures: charts, plots, maps that convey the message. Before, 2015, many such figures were inadvertantly prepared using a color scheme called jet that is visually stimulating due to the abundance of colors. Unfortunately, we have come to know of the harm it causes only recently. The jet is not perceptually uniform which is a fancy way of saying what you see is not what you get. The colormap is known to create artificial gradients in perceptibility which can mislead interpretations of figures. It is also extremely unfriendly to people with colorblindness. For more information check out the presentation of launch of the new default colormaps in matpltolib.

This script allows you to change an image (.jpg/.png) file made with jet colormap to any other colormap of your choice. The script selectively changes jet colors only. All others colors in the image remain unchanged (including background and text).

image showing transformation in colormaps from jet colormap to viridis colormap Fix the Jet in action: Program transforms the color map while leaving all other colors unaffected

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