A customer wrote a simple Matlab script to write a colormap to a CLR colormap file with the correct Surfer format.

The code is presented by Matteo in this post: https://mycarta.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/convert-matlab-colormap-to-surfer-colormap/. Discussion and questions should be posted to the above link, but the code is duplicated below in case that post is removed.

%% Make a Matlab colormap
% one of the colormaps from my function, Perceptually improved colormaps
sawtooth=pmkmp(256,'swtth');
%% Initialize variable for Surfer colormap
%reduce to 101 samples
sawtooth_surfer=zeros(101,5);
%% Make Surfer colormap
% add R,G,B columnns
for i=1:3 
sawtooth_surfer(:,i+1)=round(interp1([1:1:256]',sawtooth(:,i),(linspace(1,256,101))')*255);
end
% add counter and alpha (opacity) columns
sawtooth_surfer(:,1)=linspace(0,100,101);
sawtooth_surfer(:,5)=ones(101,1)*255;
%% Create output file 
filename='c:\My Documents\MATLAB\stth4surf.clr'; 
fileID=fopen(filename,'wt');
%%  Write Surfer colormap header
fprintf(fileID,'ColorMap 2 1\n');
fclose(fileID);
 
%% Add the colormap:
dlmwrite('c:\My Documents\MATLAB\stth4surf.clr',...
    sawtooth_surfer,'precision',5,'delimiter','\t', '-append');

Updated November 24, 2021