3D Color Palettes and Licensing
AtomLens includes selectable 3D atom color palettes for ball-and-stick molecule visualization. The palettes are suitable for commercial use when their license notices and attribution requirements are preserved.
Available palettes
In 3D mode, use the paint-palette control in the visualization HUD to choose a palette.
| Palette | Best use | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jmol | Conventional atom identity colors. | Jmol/CDK-compatible atom coloring tradition. |
| CPK | Conventional atom identity colors. | CPK-style atom coloring tradition. |
| Okabe-Ito | Accessible categorical colors. | Okabe-Ito palette values via MIT-licensed implementations. |
| Viridis, Cividis, Magma, Inferno, Plasma | Perceptual color ramps sampled for atom coloring now and reusable for future scalar 3D overlays. | Matplotlib / BIDS colormap work. |
| ColorBrewer Set2 and Dark2 | Qualitative categorical atom colors. | ColorBrewer. |
| CARTO Safe and Vivid | Accessible or high-contrast categorical atom colors. | CARTOColors. |
| Matplotlib Tab10 and Tab20 | Standard categorical atom colors. | Matplotlib. |
Licensing and attribution
Not every palette is literally copyright-free. Several palettes are copyrighted but permissively licensed for commercial use. AtomLens keeps attribution in the app Help, documentation, and package notices.
| Palette family | License status | Attribution note |
|---|---|---|
| Okabe-Ito | Commercially usable through MIT-licensed implementations of the palette values. | Retain the MIT notice for copied value tables. |
| Viridis family and Cividis | Commercially usable. BIDS colormap tables are CC0; Matplotlib is permissively licensed. | Retain Matplotlib/BIDS source references. |
| ColorBrewer | Apache-2.0. | Retain the Apache-2.0 license notice. |
| CARTOColors | CC-BY-4.0. | Commercial use is allowed with attribution. |
| Matplotlib Tab10 and Tab20 | Matplotlib's permissive license. | Retain Matplotlib attribution. |
Source references:
- BIDS colormaps
- Matplotlib license
- Matplotlib colormap reference
- ColorBrewer license
- CARTOColors
- Okabe-Ito MIT implementation
Implementation notes
CDKSwiftNativePort owns the 3D scene model and the palette value tables. Jmol and CPK use element-specific atom colors. The additional categorical and perceptual palettes map element identity deterministically by atomic number, with stable fallback colors for unknown element symbols.
© 2026 Dr. Sascha Losko - Obscure Essentials. All rights reserved.