Algorithm to convert any positive integer to an RGB value

Question

We have a heatmap we want to display. The numbers that will make up the values being displayed are unknown (except that they will be positive integers). The range of numbers is also unknown (again, except that they will be posiitive integars). The range could be between 0 and 200 or 578 and 1M or whatever. It depends on the data, which is unknown.

We want to take an unknown range of positive integers and turn it into a scaled (compressed) range to be displayed with RGB values in a heatmap. I hope this makes sense. Thanks!

I want to clarify that the min/max values need to be "plugged" into the forumla.

Answer 1

You need to first find the range of those values to get the min and max. Then you need to create a colour scale like the bar below this image. You can experiment with different functions to map an integer to an RGB. You need 3 functions R(X), G(X), B(X). Looking at the image below it loks like B(X) peaks in the middle, R(X) peaks at the end and green is somewhere else. As long as you make sure that you never get two (RGBs) for some value of X then you've got your conversion.

_{(source: globalwarmingart.com)}

EDIT: Come to think of it you could sample some unit circle around YUV space. alt text http://www.biocrawler.com/w/images/e/ec/Yuv.png

Or even just download a high-res colour bar and sample that.

EDIT 2: I was just faced with color bar generation and remembered the MATLAB/Octave colorbar code. I plotted their data and got the following image.