Tableau Desktop comes with color palettes that have been designed to work well together and effectively apply color to data in many situations, such as on maps, heat maps, bar charts, etc. You can also create and use your own custom color palettes by modifying the preferences.tps file that comes with Tableau Desktop. For example, you can create a custom categorical palette that matches your company's brand.
In this blog, we will see how to create "Autumn Colours Palette". I have taken the colors from the below picture.
To create this palette, firstly we need to open preferences.tps from our local Tableau Repository folder. Always make sure to open this file with notepad, as it is much easier to make changes.
The preferences.tps file looks like below before applying any changes.
Between the opening and closing workbook tags, insert opening and closing preferences tags and add your color palette
"Autumn Colours" preferences.tps now looks like below.
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<workbook>
<preferences>
<color-palette name="Autumn Colours" type="regular" >
<color>#d2c5b2</color>
<color>#f0ab5e</color>
<color>#707645</color>
<color>#ee5f61</color>
<color>#c32b4e</color>
<color>#aa9f33</color>
<color>#d2704c</color>
<color>#982a54</color>
</color-palette>
</preferences>
</workbook>
Once added, please click on save and restart your Tableau workbook.
Open a data source, such as the Superstore - Sample data source.
From the Data pane, drag a discrete dimension, such as Region, to Color.
Click the color legend menu arrow and select Edit Colors.
In the Edit Colors dialog box, from the palette drop-down list, select your new custom palette.It show appear in your list as shown below:
Click on Assign Palette button to assign the custom colors to respective fields and click ok.
This way we can always create our own custom palette filled with our favorite colors, if it not already in the list. Follow my next blog to see how to create a custom sequential color palette.
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