Ever had trouble determining an appropriate color scheme for you mapping projects and products?  Here is an extremely useful resource for selecting color schemes for your cartographic products. It’s a website called ColorBrewer 2.0, developed by Cynthia Brewer, professor of Geography at Penn Stat colorbrewer2.org.

How it Works – Use the default test map and provided data to preview color schemes or upload your own data and test the various scenarios. Selecting from the provided color systems, users can elect to map their data and color ramp using RGB, CMYK, or HEX color code systems. Taking the map a little further in the sample data, users can alternatively view their map as a solid color or use a terrain map look and feel. Additionally, an option to adjust color transparency is also available and the base map content can be adjusted to display roads, cities, or simple borders. Simply put, this tool is down-right awesome!

Oh, and once you find a color scheme that works for you go ahead and download the color file to an Excel file or as an Adobe compatible ASE file format – and ColorBrewer can be used directly inside AcrGIS (9X) by using the provided download file.

See http://colorbrewer2.org/