'parula' colormap in pgfplots

Question

I try to implement 'parula' Matlab colormap in pgfplots drawings. Here is the MWE for that palette with 10 points for interpolation:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

\pgfplotsset{
colormap={parula}{
rgb255=(53,42,135)
rgb255=(15,92,221)
rgb255=(18,125,216)
rgb255=(7,156,207)
rgb255=(21,177,180)
rgb255=(89,189,140)
rgb255=(165,190,107)
rgb255=(225,185,82)
rgb255=(252,206,46)
rgb255=(249,251,14)}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\begin{axis}[
colorbar sampled,
colorbar style={ytick={0,0.1,...,1},samples=11},
point meta min=0,
point meta max=1
]

\end{axis}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Strange thing is that produced colormap does not correpsond to the inserted interpolation points. In the following picture, there is comparison of the correct 'parula' colormap (left bar, colors correspond to the interpolation points) with the result produced by pgfplots (right bar, colors are wrong). In fact, two results are not consistent, especially at the edge positions - top and bottom of the palette.

Do you have any ideas what is going wrong here?

Answer 1

The OPs code gives the expected result (from the point of view from PGFPlots), but I think "the user" expects that "the last shown color" in the colorbar should be the last defined color in the colormap.

With OPs code that "last color" is indeed used in the colorbar, but only at 1 (and above), so it is invisible. Luckily with PGFPlots v1.14 there where introduced many new features regarding colormaps and colorbars so it is now very easy to create the colorbar "the user expects".

For more details please have a look at the comments in the code.

\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{pgfplots}
    \pgfplotsset{
        colormap={parula}{
            rgb255=(53,42,135)
            rgb255=(15,92,221)
            rgb255=(18,125,216)
            rgb255=(7,156,207)
            rgb255=(21,177,180)
            rgb255=(89,189,140)
            rgb255=(165,190,107)
            rgb255=(225,185,82)
            rgb255=(252,206,46)
            rgb255=(249,251,14)
        },
    }
\begin{document}
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \begin{axis}[
            % use the following key--value to get the desired result
            colormap access=piecewise const,
            % (just to save (vertical) space in the answer)
            colorbar horizontal,
%            % -----
%            % (please note that also the following key isn't needed any more
%            %  in this solution. But then it could be that your PDF viewer
%            %  returns a strange result. For example in SumatraPDF this most
%            %  probably is a bug that is reported already
%            %  <https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf/issues/595>)
%            colorbar sampled,
%            % also this key isn't needed when using
%            % `colormap access=piecewise constant' and the number of "samples"
%            % equals the number of given colors in the colormap
%            colorbar style={
%                samples=11,
%            },
%            % -----
%            % if you need more or less colors than the colormap provides than
%            % you can use the new keys provided
%            % (see "Building Colormaps ased on other Colormaps" in
%            %  section 4.7.6 of the PGFPlots manual (v1.14) on page 198ff)
%            colormap={my sampled version of viridis}{
%                samples of colormap=(10 of viridis)
%            },
%            % -----
            point meta min=0,
            point meta max=1,
        ]
        \end{axis}
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}