Opening a color scheme

You can open a color scheme that has previously been saved to disk or to the library. You can also apply a color scheme from another visualization in the analysis, or open a document color scheme. The color scheme must be in the same axis mode as the visualization where you want to use it.

Before you begin

Opening and applying color schemes can be done in the installed client only.

Procedure

Open the Visualization Properties dialog, and go to the Colors page.
Open the Color Schemes menu .
Select Open from library or Open from File, depending on where the color scheme is located.
In the dialog that opens, locate and select the color scheme you want to open.
When opening from the library, you can use search to find the color scheme. See Searching in Spotfire to learn more about searching.
If the selected color scheme is continuous, the colors will be applied to the visualization directly. If the color scheme is categorical, the Apply Method dialog opens. Decide how you want the colors to be matched to the values in the visualization by selecting Colors only or Colors matched to values, and then click OK to apply the colors to the visualization. See Apply methods for categorical color schemes for more details on the options.

To open a document color scheme

A document color scheme is a color scheme that is saved in the analysis and can be reused within that specific analysis.

Procedure

Open the Visualization Properties dialog, and go to the Colors page.
Open the Color Schemes menu .
Select Document Color Schemes to open a submenu where the previously saved document color schemes are listed, and select the color scheme you want to use.

Note: If the Document Color Schemes option is not available in the menu, it means that no document color schemes have been saved in the analysis.
If the selected color scheme is continuous, the colors will be applied to the visualization directly. If the color scheme is categorical, the Apply Method dialog opens. Decide how you want the colors to be matched to the values in the visualization by selecting Colors only or Colors matched to values, and then click OK to apply the colors to the visualization. See Apply methods for categorical color schemes for more details on the options.

To apply a color scheme from a visualization

You can reuse the color configuration from another visualization in the analysis even if the color scheme has not been saved.

Procedure

Open the Visualization Properties dialog, and go to the Colors page.
Open the Color Schemes menu .
Select From Visualization to open a submenu where the pages in the analysis are listed, and select the page of interest.
In the submenu that opens, select the visualization with the color scheme you want to apply to your current visualization.

Note: Only pages and visualizations with color schemes that can be applied to your current visualization will be listed in the menu. If no other visualizations exist in the analysis, the From Visualization menu option is not available.
If the selected color scheme is continuous, the colors will be applied to the visualization directly. If the color scheme is categorical, the Apply Method dialog opens. Decide how you want the colors to be matched to the values in the visualization by selecting Colors only or Colors matched to values, and then click OK to apply the colors to the visualization. See Apply methods for categorical color schemes for more details on the options.
If you apply the color scheme from a map chart, it is the color scheme of the interactive layer that will be applied.

To apply a color scheme to another visualization

When you have configured the coloring for a visualization, you can apply that color scheme to other visualizations in your analysis, if the visualizations are colored by a column in the same axis mode.

Procedure

Open the Visualization Properties dialog for the visualization you have already configured the coloring, and go to the Colors page.
Open the Color Schemes menu and select Apply to Visualizations.
From the Available visualizations list in the Apply to Visualizations dialog, select and add the visualizations or pages you want to apply the color scheme to. If you select a page, the color scheme will be applied to all the visualizations with the same axis mode on that page.
If the color scheme is categorical, you must decide how the colors should be matched to the values in the selected visualizations. Select an Apply method in the lower part of the dialog. See Apply methods for categorical color schemes for more details on the options.
Click OK to apply the color scheme to the selected visualizations.
If you apply a color scheme to a table, cross table, or heat map, the coloring will not take effect immediately. The color scheme will be added as an empty color scheme grouping, and you must select which columns or axis values to include in the grouping by opening the Edit Color Scheme Grouping dialog. See Coloring in tables, cross tables, and heat maps to learn more about color scheme groupings.

If you apply a color scheme to a map chart, it is the interactive layer that will receive the new colors.

Apply methods for categorical color schemes

Example

When you open a categorical color scheme, or apply a categorical color scheme to a visualization, you can apply the colors in two different ways. Either you apply only the colors to the visualization, or you match the colors to the values in the visualization. The scatter plot below is colored by the column Type, which contains a number of different fruits, vegetables, and spices. These all have their own color in the color scheme.

The color scheme from the scatter plot above has been applied to the two visualizations below, but using different application methods.


Colors only	Colors matched to values

The bar chart is colored by a column containing completely different values than the scatter plot, in this case countries. Therefore the option Apply > Colors only was selected when applying the colors to the visualization. The scatter plot is colored by a column that contains some of the same values from the upper scatter plot. Therefore, the option Apply > Colors matched to values was selected for this visualization. This ensures that the values the visualization has in common with the color scheme will get the same colors. If the visualization contains values that do not exist in the color scheme, then colors from the default color palette will be used for those values.

Note: If the color scheme contains any rules, they will only be included if you select Colors matched to values.