Selecting Color Schemes and Converting Colors

One of the most important aspects of making a map look professional is selecting colors. In our last project, I spent a considerable amount of time trying to select custom colors that worked well together and did not overpower other elements of the maps. In doing reasearch for another class I happened upon a site devoted to assisting in the selection fo colors for maps. The site is http://colorbrewer2.org/ . At first glance this page seemed somewhat interesting, but the more I explored, the more useful things I found. It is possible to create a complete color scheme including selecting the colors or roads and city names, and then, at the click of a mouse the map can be toggled between several color schemes to show the difference in appearence. You can even select schemes that are freindly to colorblind readers. This site includes a link to a fully functional colorscheme generator that is an extension for ArcGIS 9.x. You will also find a downloadable Excel file that list every color scheme with the number settings and color swatches. This is worth a quick investigation.