Howdy fellow GM'ers.
Finding/making palettes and shaders can be a chore. Here is a source for 165 of them designed specifically for cartography, and a fairly easy method to get them turned into ".pal" files for use in GM.
First, go to this non-commercial site http://colorbrewer2.org and see if any of these palettes are useful to you. Familiarize yourself with the types/color schemes/class numbers, and how the page works. The site provides four ways to export the RGB values for a chosen palette (click "Export your colors" at lower left of map area); but only one of those worked for me.
Choose the option to download an Excel file of all 165 possible palettes. If you have a newer Excel, the palette colors are illustrated in a column to the right of the RGB values, and you may not need the web page anymore. If you have an older spreadsheet program that won't show the color swatches, you will still need to refer to the web page to find a particular palette on the spreadsheet by using it's identifying code (e.g. YlGnBu) and the number of classes.
Once you've picked a palette on the spreadsheet, select and copy just the set of RGB values for that particular palette, and paste them to a new instance of the spreadsheet program. Then, in the second spreadsheet choose to "Save As" a .csv file, and name the file "yourpalettename.pal". You should then have a palette file that GM can read. If you want to adjust it after seeing it, make the changes in GM, and re-save it from there.
To make a shader from the palette in GM, choose to make a new shader from Configuration>Shader Options>Custom Shaders>New. Then click on "Initialize from Palette File". The new palette will appear in the window, and you can set your elevation or slope values for each color as needed.
The direct link to the Excel file is:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/Co...s_RGBonly3.XLS
or:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/Co..._and_Macro.xls
Good Luck. If you need help, just ask. You can also mix/change/combine/append them on the second spreadsheet.
Finding/making palettes and shaders can be a chore. Here is a source for 165 of them designed specifically for cartography, and a fairly easy method to get them turned into ".pal" files for use in GM.
First, go to this non-commercial site http://colorbrewer2.org and see if any of these palettes are useful to you. Familiarize yourself with the types/color schemes/class numbers, and how the page works. The site provides four ways to export the RGB values for a chosen palette (click "Export your colors" at lower left of map area); but only one of those worked for me.
Choose the option to download an Excel file of all 165 possible palettes. If you have a newer Excel, the palette colors are illustrated in a column to the right of the RGB values, and you may not need the web page anymore. If you have an older spreadsheet program that won't show the color swatches, you will still need to refer to the web page to find a particular palette on the spreadsheet by using it's identifying code (e.g. YlGnBu) and the number of classes.
Once you've picked a palette on the spreadsheet, select and copy just the set of RGB values for that particular palette, and paste them to a new instance of the spreadsheet program. Then, in the second spreadsheet choose to "Save As" a .csv file, and name the file "yourpalettename.pal". You should then have a palette file that GM can read. If you want to adjust it after seeing it, make the changes in GM, and re-save it from there.
To make a shader from the palette in GM, choose to make a new shader from Configuration>Shader Options>Custom Shaders>New. Then click on "Initialize from Palette File". The new palette will appear in the window, and you can set your elevation or slope values for each color as needed.
The direct link to the Excel file is:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/Co...s_RGBonly3.XLS
or:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/Co..._and_Macro.xls
Good Luck. If you need help, just ask. You can also mix/change/combine/append them on the second spreadsheet.