One of the most important aids I use when I am out fishing is my map. Being able to easily read depth contours and see variations on the seabed is important in order to be able to identify places where the fish are gathering, and navigate along these places. C-Map Reveal and Discover comes with detailed and easy-to-read maps out of the box, but there is still a trick that makes it even easier to read them!
How to set up a custom color palette - Step by step
Setting up a custom color palette is easy. I will go through the process step by step and use as a case that I will go out to fish for sea trout. I want to have control of the depths between 0 and 12 meters in this example.
Open the chart window on your chartplotter and activate the menu at the top right of the screen. Select "More options".
You are now in the first submenu. Here you select "Chart options".
In this menu you can make many settings that affect the appearance of your map. Note that I have ticked for "Hig-res bathy", you should do the same as it gives you access to more detailed depth quotes. Then scroll to the bottom of the menu.
At the bottom you will find "Shading".
You are now in the menu that controls the custom palettes. You can create two different palettes that you can switch between as needed. None of them have been chosen yet, as we can see. Select "Custom ...".
We are now inside the editor for the custom palettes. Here you see some tabs at the top where you will find the two palettes we mentioned earlier. We'll set up for the "Depth 1" palette. Press the line that says "Add Point ...".
You can now define the first depth range and the first color in your palette. In the "Depth (m)" field, select the depth at which you start with the selected color. In this case, we will start at depth 0, so we do not change anything there.
The next field is "Color", tap on the color and you will see a list of available colors.
Since we now define the color to be displayed from depth 0, we choose red. "Opacity (%)" allows you to set a transparency on your color, but we do not use this option in this example. Leave it at 100% and press "OK".
Now you can repeat this process until you have set up with as many colors as you want to use. You can define a maximum of 10 different colors, but most of the time you do not need as many. This feature works to interpolate between the different colors, so even if you choose only 5 colors as in this case, it will result in many variations of these colors in your map. It is the last color in the list that determines the color at depths that are deeper than those you have defined. If you want the colors to stop at a given depth, then enter the color white at this depth, which then becomes the last defined depth.
In the example above I have set up so that I will get colors between 0 and 12 meters depth, but below 12 meters the map will not have colors. Color red (you do not see it because I have marked that line in the table) starts at 0 meters. At a depth of 2 meters, orange color starts and at 3 meters, yellow color starts. An interpolation will then be created between these colors.
Click out of this window and check "Depth 1" in the menu so that the colors appear on your map.
It was not more difficult than this! This simple function is one of the things I appreciate most when I am out orienteering at sea and looking for good fishing spots. A few tips at the end:
Customize the depth palette for different purposes, do not color depth ranges that you do not need information about.
Feel free to set up a palette for shallow water and a palette for deep water that you can switch between.
Avoid dark colors. Dark colors make the map difficult to read, rather use colors that provide good contrast and leave the part of the map you do not want to highlight white.
Hope this was a good review of this topic, try it out and find the palettes you think work best for your own use, the possibilities are many!
Best regards, Atle