Glossary for Geospatial Science

color map or color table:  A color map is the table, or map, used by a computer system to assign display colors to digital values.  A color map for an 8-bit raster object can contain a total of 256 colors.  A gray scale image may have a color map with 256 shades of gray, ranging from black (0) to white (255).  The first 64 places in a color map are normally assigned to the “standard 64” annotation colors.  Additionally, certain processes may use 16 values for standard shades of gray.  The remaining 176 or 192 colors are then available for the image colors used in the display.  Some types of color maps that you will encounter in TNTmips are optimized color maps and composite color maps.