A Coloring Solution to the Edge Crossing Problem

We introduce the concept of coloring close and crossing edges in graph drawings with perceptually opposing colors making them individually more distinguishable and reducing edge-crossing effects. We define a "closeness" metric on edges as a combination of distance, angle and crossing. We use the inverse of this metric to compute a color embedding in the L*a*b* color space and assign "close" edges colors that are perceptually far apart. We present the following results: a distance metric on graph edges, a method of coloring graph edges, and anecdotal evidence that this technique can improve the reading of graph edges.