When you’re building complex molecular models, visuals matter. Whether it’s distinguishing between different protein chains, highlighting interaction sites, or simply making your work look more readable and aesthetically pleasing, choosing the right color palette can make a big difference.
Color is not just decoration—it improves understanding. But with so many colors and palettes available, it can feel overwhelming to choose the right one. Thankfully, SAMSON, the integrative molecular design platform, offers a curated set of Discrete color palettes designed to provide clear, distinct colors ideal for categorical distinctions.
Why Discrete Colors?
Discrete color palettes are mainly used when you’re dealing with distinct categories—for example, different ligands, chains, residues, or atom types. The main challenge is to pick a set of colors that are easily differentiated, both on screen and in print, and under different lighting conditions or visual impairments.
SAMSON’s Palette Collection
SAMSON offers a rich selection of discrete color palettes to fit different modeling needs. Each palette provides a range of unique colors optimized for visibility and aesthetics. Here are some examples:
- Accent: Great for up to 8 highly contrasting categories
- Carto Vivid: Bold and punchy colors for strong visual impact
- Okabe-Ito: Designed for color vision deficiency accessibility
- Set1, Set2, Set3: Popular datasets from color theory libraries
- tab10, tab20: Extended color selections used in plots and graphs
Each palette is instantly previewable before application, allowing users to test what works best for their current scene or molecular graph.
Colorblind-Friendly Modeling
A frequent challenge in molecular modeling is ensuring your visuals are accessible. The Okabe-Ito palette, for example, is colorblind-safe and effective for distinguishing components without relying on hue alone. If you’re preparing figures for publication or presentations, this palette is worth trying.
Preview Before You Apply
All palettes include a preview image, making it easy to select the right one without trial-and-error:
Example: The Okabe-Ito palette, optimized for accessibility
Tips for Better Color Use
- You can revert left and right arms of color palettes in the color palette dialogs for better customization.
- Creating your own palette? You can also add custom palettes directly in SAMSON’s color dialogs.
- Be mindful of how colors print, especially if submitting for review or journal publication.
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re preparing a presentation, publishing a figure, or building a model with dozens of components, using an optimized discrete color palette can help both you and your collaborators make sense of complex data. And with SAMSON’s user-friendly previews, finding the right combination becomes much easier. Try a few palettes and see how they transform your next project.
To explore all default color palettes available in SAMSON, visit the official documentation here: https://documentation.samson-connect.net/users/latest/color-palettes/
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.