A module for converting numbers or color arguments to RGB or RGBA.

RGB and RGBA are sequences of, respectively, 3 or 4 floats in the range 0-1.

This module includes functions and classes for color specification conversions, and for mapping numbers to colors in a 1-D array of colors called a colormap.

Mapping data onto colors using a colormap typically involves two steps: a data array is first mapped onto the range 0-1 using a subclass of Normalize, then this number is mapped to a color using a subclass of Colormap. Two subclasses of Colormap provided here: LinearSegmentedColormap, which uses piecewise-linear interpolation to define colormaps, and ListedColormap, which makes a colormap from a list of colors.

The module also provides functions for checking whether an object can be interpreted as a color (is_color_like), for converting such an object to an RGBA tuple (to_rgba) or to an HTML-like hex string in the "#rrggbb" format (to_hex), and a sequence of colors to an (n, 4) RGBA array (to_rgba_array). Caching is used for efficiency.

Colors that Matplotlib recognizes are listed at Specifying colors.