This is an overview over all the matplotlib colormaps and how they look in images.

This is sequential data, ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 as a Gaussian. Note how rings suggest qualitative thresholds in the data. Usually, you'll want to avoid them.

This is divergent data, ranging from -1.0 to 1.0 linearly. Some colormaps suggest a qualitative division into separate ranges (e.g. negative/zero/positive etc.)