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I've got a script that dumps a floating point raster that I'd like to automatically color. Currently I load this raster in Arc or QGIS and manually create a color table every time I re-run my model. I'd like my model to automatically create a nice color table, but the only functionality I can find is to create a color table for integer only rasters.

My approach so far is to output 2 rasters, one with floating point values rendered in grayscale and a second integer raster that has the colors on it. I can flip between the two to see values, but it's far from optimal.

Is there a technique to procedurally create floating point color tables in GDAL that automatically load with QGIS or Arc?

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For arcgis 10 you could save a layer file with symbology applied and then use a python script to change the data source as part of the output of the originating script. See layer.findAndReplaceWorkspacePath.

For Quantum the 1-band raster colour table plugin might suit: "After selection of a single band raster ... launch this plugin to generate a colour table ... The colour table is made of the combination of a colour palette ... and a colouring method (the way to relate a colour index in the palette to a real value in the raster). " It's not automatic but may alleviate the work a bit.

Alternatively you may be able to work some magic with rgb2pct utility which has the option of loading a colour pallette from an external file.

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