Creating a color palette

As a report, dashboard, or story author, you can create custom color palettes while you work on the canvas.

About this task

You can create the following types of color palettes:
Categories
Used for visualizations that support discrete colors, like a bar or pie chart.
Continuous
Used for visualizations that support color transitions, like a map or a heat map.
Some visualizations support both types of color palettes. For example, if you drop a measure on to the color slot of a bar chart, you can add a color gradient to the bars for that measure. The following visualizations support both types of color palettes:
  • Bar, floating bar, stacked bar
  • Floating column, stacked column
  • Bubble, packed bubble, hierarchical packed bubble
  • Marimekko
  • Radial
  • Scatter plot
  • Tree map
Color palettes are grouped into the following categories:
Custom
Created by a user (report, dashboard, or story author). Available only to the user who created them.
Global
Created by the system administrator. A global palette is available to all users but only an administrator can modify it. A user can duplicate a global palette and then modify the duplicated version. For more information about global palettes, see Creating a global color palette.
System
Default palettes available in IBM® Cognos Analytics with Watson. A system palette can't be changed but a user can duplicate it and then modify the duplicated version.

Procedure

  1. Make sure that a visualization is selected on the canvas.
  2. Do one of the following things, depending on your role:
    Role Action
    Report author Click Show properties. Under COLOR PALETTE, click the 3 dots icon for a property. Click Change custom palette Create a custom palette icon..
    Dashboard or story author Click Properties. The visualization can have one or both of a categorical color palette or a continuous color palette. Click Change custom palette Create a custom palette icon.
    If you're working on a visualization that uses discrete colors, like a bar or pie chart, then the Create categorical color palette window opens. If you're working on a visualization that uses color transitions, like a map or a heat map, then the Create continuous color palette window opens.
  3. Enter a name for your palette.
  4. Click the Grid or Wheel tab.
    In the Grid tab, you can select colors from a grid of color swatches. In the Wheel tab, you can select a color by doing one of the following things:
    • Clicking the color wheel
    • Typing the color in HSB (hue, saturation, brightness) or RGB (red, green, blue) notation
    • Typing the color in hex code
  5. Under Color guide, click Automatic or Custom.
    Categorical color palette
    Contains a set of swatches. In Automatic, when you select a color from the grid or wheel, all swatches in the palette are filled with colors that are related to the color you selected, starting from the currently selected swatch. In Custom, you must select each swatch and then select a color for it.
    Continuous color palette
    Contains one continuous swatch. In Custom, when you select a color from the grid or wheel, the swatch is filled with the color you selected. The color gradually increases in intensity from one end of the swatch to the other. Automatic is not available for a continuous color palette.
  6. To undo a selection, click Remove swatch remove swatch icon.
  7. To add more swatches to the palette, click Add swatch add swatch icon.
  8. To reverse the colors in the palette, click Reverse palette reverse palette icon.
  9. Click Save when you are finished.

Results

The color palette appears under Custom. You can now apply it to visualizations.