MATLAB: Cyclic colormap for visualizing angles

colormapimagescMATLABpcolorvector field

I am visualizing angles of a norm-preserving vector field, please see http://www.flickr.com/photos/aamirahmed/6328889041/in/photostream The colors in this photo represent the direction of the vector (relative to +x axis) at that point.
With the built-in colormaps, there is an abrupt change in the colors between -180 and 180. This is very misleading, since angles are cyclic numbers, for example 90 and 100 are as close to each other as 175 and -175.
I think this problem can be addressed by using a cyclic colormap. By cyclic colormap, I mean when approaching the maximum value in the colormap, it blends into the minimum value, with no abrupt change in between.
Does anybody else here feel for the need of a cyclic colormap for this purpose? Please share if you already have a cyclic colormap. Also please suggest other solutions to address this problem.

Best Answer

I've written a phasemap function for this, built on Kristen Thyng's cmocean phase colormap. It has an approximately constant lightness profile, which places even emphasis on all phase values.