This Highcharts plugin changes the gradient used on the ColorAxis and adds a continous color band between ticks.
Motivation
A ColorAxis can be used to transmit accurate information.
Unfortunately, human eyes can get pretty confused by continuous gradients (e.g., Checker shadow illusion).
In these cases, it's better to only use a few discrete colors that can be easily distinguished, which means colour banding.
Configuration
The amount of banding can be configured via banding property, where:
-
0orfalsemeans no-banding, and is the same as not using this plugin -
1ortruewill result in completely discrete color bands - Any number between 0 and 1 will result in continuous bands with smooth transitions in between
I've found that 40-60% works nicely on contour curve charts, but YMMV.