Derive a Color Palette from a Particular Location on Earth

Downloads a satellite image via ESRI and maptiles (these are originally from a variety of aerial photography sources), translates the image into a perceptually uniform color space, runs one of a few different clustering algorithms on the colors in the image searching for a user-supplied number of colors, and returns the resulting color palette.

Overview

earthtones is an R package designed to extract color palettes from satellite imagery, providing visually appealing earth-inspired color schemes.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Installation
• Usage
  • Example: Grand Canyon
  • Example: The Bahamas
  • Example: Uluru, Australia
• Using Palettes in Your Own Visualizations
  • ggplot2 Example
• Contributing
• Citation
• License

Installation

Install the released version from CRAN:

#install.packages("earthtones")

Or the latest development version from GitHub:

remotes::install_github("wcornwell/earthtones")

Load the package:

library("earthtones")

Usage

earthtones provides the function get_earthtones, which:

1. Downloads satellite imagery from a supported provider (e.g., Esri).
2. Converts image colors into a perceptually uniform color space (CIE LAB).
3. Identifies dominant colors using clustering methods (kmeans or pam).
4. Returns an aesthetically pleasing color palette.

Example: Grand Canyon

get_earthtones(latitude = 36.094994, longitude = -111.837962, 
               zoom = 12, number_of_colors = 8)

Adjust number_of_colors to control how many dominant colors are returned. The zoom parameter controls the level of detail, with larger numbers providing closer views.

Example: The Bahamas

Explore vibrant tropical colors:

get_earthtones(latitude = 24.2, longitude = -77.88, zoom = 11, number_of_colors = 5)

Example: Uluru, Australia

Earth tones from the iconic Australian landscape:

get_earthtones(latitude = -25.33, longitude = 131.0396, zoom = 10, number_of_colors = 6)

Using Palettes in Your Own Visualizations

To retrieve the color palette without plotting the map, set include.map = FALSE:

palette <- get_earthtones(latitude = 24.2, longitude = -77.88,
                          zoom = 11, number_of_colors = 5,
                          include.map = FALSE)

print(palette)
#> [1] "#4A4E35" "#A5A188" "#84D4D3" "#D3DCC9" "#29B3CF"

This returns a standard R color palette ready to be used directly in your visualizations or designs.

Example with ggplot2

Here’s how you might apply the palette to a ggplot2 visualization:

library(ggplot2)

# Generate the palette
bahamas_palette <- get_earthtones(latitude = 24.2, longitude = -77.88,
                                  zoom = 11, number_of_colors = 5,
                                  include.map = FALSE)

# Example ggplot
ggplot(mtcars, aes(factor(cyl), fill = factor(cyl))) +
  geom_bar() +
  scale_fill_manual(values = bahamas_palette) +
  theme_minimal() +
  labs(title = "MTCARS Cylinders with Bahamas Earthtones",
       fill = "Cylinders")

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please report issues or suggest features on the GitHub issues page. Pull requests are also encouraged.

Citation

If you use earthtones in your research or projects, please cite it using:

citation("earthtones")
#> To cite package 'earthtones' in publications use:
#> 
#>   Cornwell W, Lyons M, Murray N (2025). _earthtones: Derive a Color
#>   Palette from a Particular Location on Earth_. R package version
#>   0.2.0, commit 07ed455773577ab5b0a2a68cd45b0f1384ab2a7f,
#>   <https://github.com/wcornwell/earthtones>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     title = {earthtones: Derive a Color Palette from a Particular Location on Earth},
#>     author = {Will Cornwell and Mitch Lyons and Nick Murray},
#>     year = {2025},
#>     note = {R package version 0.2.0, commit 07ed455773577ab5b0a2a68cd45b0f1384ab2a7f},
#>     url = {https://github.com/wcornwell/earthtones},
#>   }

License

This package is released under the MIT License.