Back in 2012, I wrote a post about loading custom color ramps into ArcGIS. It’s been a consistently popular post but is very outdated. In that post, I suggested downloading and installing ESRI’s ColorRamps2.o package. ColorRamps2.0 was replaced with ColorRamps3.0 around the time I wrote the post. Today, although there’s a link to download ColorRamps3.0 it doesn’t seem to be functioning.
Instead of simply updating an old blog post, I thought it would be helpful to write a new updated post. I’ll show you how to create color ramps on the fly in ArcGIS and how to import custom color ramps into ArcGIS 10.5. I’ll also provide a list of color ramp creation and download sources.
If you already have a color ramp .style file, you can follow the steps below to add them into ArcMap:
- Copy the .style files to C:\Program Files (x86)\ArcGIS\Desktop10.5\Styles. Your Styles will be different depending on your operating system and version of ArcGIS.
- Open ArcMap.
- Click the customize dropdown and select Style Manager.
- On the right side of the Style Manager click on the Styles… button. At this point, your custom style name should just show up in your style manager. However, if it doesn’t because you put your style file in a different directory or some other reason, you need to follow two more steps. First, click Add Style to List. Navigate to the directory where you placed the .style files and select your custom file. Highlight the file and click Open. You will have to do this for each .style file you want to add.
- After all of the styles are shown in the Style References list, make sure they are check marked and click the Set as Default List button.
- Click OK and you should see your styles on the left side of the Style Manager. Close the style manager. Now, you can go to the symbology tab of your Layer Properties for a given raster and select one of the new color ramps. If you want to see the text descriptions of the ramps, click on the color ramp dropdown and uncheck ‘Graphic View’.
So where can you find alternative .style files with color ramps? It seems to be getting harder to find them these days. As I mentioned above, you used to be able to get them from the ESRI mapping center but that resource seems to be abandoned. Let me know if you know where to find ColorRamps3.0 or 2.0 today.
ColorBrewer2.org used to be another good resource but the site has removed the option to download ramps in the .style format. Fortunately, you can still access them by going to http://www.reachresourcecentre.info/arcgis-colorbrewer-color-ramp-style and downloading the zip file.
You can check out Fred Lott’s color ramps on GitHub too. Of course, if you aren’t finding quite the ramp for your needs and you’re trying to show quantities, you could always build your own.
To set your own quantities ramp for your layer, follow these steps:
- Right click on your layer and go to the Symbology tab.
- Click on Show Quantities and select Graduated Colors.
- Choose your field’s value and normalization and how many classes you want your data broken into. Your classes will already have a color ramp assigned
- Double click on the first class symbol color. Choose another color that you want for the start of your custom ramp.
- Next, double click on the last class symbol color and choose the last color in your ramp.
- Right click on any of the symbols and select Ramp Colors. This will generate the color ramp between the top and bottom colors you chose.
So there you have it. If you’re not happy with what ESRI has already provided you for styles you have a few options for customization. If you know of any other style resources I didn’t mention, please feel free to let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.