Tool: Color Key

see image how-to

Color Key creates a legend or key to show the value-color correspondences in a figure, such as from:

• color by attribute (bfactor , others)
• color by map value (sample, electrostatic, gradient)
• color by distance (radial, cylindrical, height)
• coulombic
• mlp
• measure convexity

The Color Key dialog can be opened from the Depiction section of the Tools menu and manipulated like other panels (more...). It can also be started by clicking the Right Mouse toolbar icon or the Key button in Surface Color. Starting the tool automatically generates an initial color key according to the current settings and enables redrawing and moving it with the mouse. The color key can be controlled with the dialog, mouse, and/or the key command. The command also has a showTool option to raise the dialog.

To create a title for the key (e.g., “electrostatic potential” as shown in the image), use 2dlabels.

When a color-by-value command is run interactively (in gui mode and not via a script), the key option of that command can be used to start Color Key with the corresponding colors and values already set. For example, see the instructions for the last image in Coloring by Sequence Conservation, pt. 3. See also: Render by Attribute, Scale Bar, mousemode , making images

It is usually best to adjust the Number of colors/labels (default 3) as needed before making other changes.

The color/label pairs from bottom to top in the dialog will be arranged from bottom to top in a vertical key and from left to right in a horizontal key. Label text can be entered directly or pasted, potentially including symbols.

Clicking Reverse repopulates the color/label values in the reverse of the current order. Blend colors indicates whether to draw the color bar as a continuous gradient (default), as opposed to distinct colors only. The colors can be changed collectively by choosing a named palette (default blue-white-red ) from the pulldown menu and clicking Apply, or individually by clicking the color well and using the system color editor.

The Size and lower-left corner Position values can be edited directly, and are expressed in fractional coordinates 0.0-1.0 where 1.0 represents the full width or height of the graphics window and 1.0,1.0 its top right corner. However, it is usually easiest to set the location and size interactively with the mouse according to Adjust key with [button] mouse button (on by default; sets the color key mouse mode). Clicking with the assigned button or its trackpad equivalent sets the location, and dragging sets the size. A color key can be vertical (taller than wide) or horizontal (wider than tall). A previously created color key can be moved by grabbing near its center and dragging, but clicking anywhere else will delete the color key and start over. If width and height are both extremely small, such as from clicking without dragging, the key is not drawn. The color key is created as a model, and only one color key can exist at a time, Further options are in tabbed sections:

• Border
• Labels
• Tick Marks

Clicking Close hides the dialog without deleting the color key model, whereas Delete/Close both deletes the color key model (forgetting the current settings) and closes the dialog. Clicking Help shows this page in the Help Viewer.

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Border

• Show border – whether the color key should have an outline border (default on)
• Color – whether to use the color in the color well (default off, meaning to adjust automatically to black or white depending on the color of the window background)
• Width – pixel width of border (default 2.0)

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Labels

• Color – whether to use the color in the color well (default off, meaning to adjust automatically to black or white depending on the color of the window background)
• Font size – label font size, an integer greater than zero (default 24)
• Font – label font (default Arial; available fonts vary by system and can be reported with the key listfonts command)
• Bold – whether labels should be bold (default off)
• Italic – whether labels should be italic (default off)
• Numeric spacing – how to space numeric values along the key
  • equal
  • proportional to value (default) – by value if all labels are numeric and in monotonically increasing or decreasing order in the dialog, otherwise equally
• Side – which side of the bar to place labels:
  • left/top – to the left of a vertical key, above a horizontal key
  • right/bottom (default) – to the right of a vertical key, below a horizontal key
• Justification – how to justify the label text for a vertical key:
  • left
  • decimal point (default) – aligned on the decimal point if all labels are numeric, otherwise right-justified
  • right
• Offset – offset in pixels of labels from the bar (default 0.0, no offset; positive values move labels farther from the bar, negative closer to the bar)

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Tick Marks

• Show tick marks – whether the color key should have tick marks (default off)
• Length – tick mark length in pixels (default 10.0)
• Width – tick mark width in pixels (default 4.0)

Tick mark color is the same as border color.