MATLAB: How to crate a two direction colorbar

Question

Hi,

I am using scatter to generate a 2-D plot. My y-axis values range between, let's say, ylim([-100 100]). The direction of the colorbar, in the jet color scale, will be "dark blue" for -100 up to "dark red" for 100. Is there any way I can have a double direction colorbar centered around zero? For instance, 0 will be the "dark blue", while -100 and 100 will be the "dark red". Of course the colors inbetween will correspond to the values between [0 100] and [-100 0].

Answer 1

Sure. Try this:

numPoints = 500;
y = -100 + 200 * rand(1, numPoints);
x = 10 * rand(1, numPoints);
% Assign colors
cm = [flipud(jet(128)); jet(128)];
% Make 200 long.
cm = imresize(cm, [200, 3]);
markerColors = zeros(length(y), 3);
for k = 1 : length(y)
	thisValue = round(y(k) + 100);
	if thisValue < 1
		thisValue = 1;
	elseif thisValue > size(cm, 1)
		thisValue = size(cm, 1);
	end
	markerColors(k, :) = cm(thisValue, :);
end
scatter(x, y, 35, markerColors, 'filled');
% Put a line at the x axis
grid on;
line(xlim, [0, 0], 'Color', 'k', 'LineWidth', 2);