The palette is converted to RGB or LUV coordinates and plotted in a three-dimensional scatterplot. The LUV space is probably better, but it is easier to tweak colors by hand in RGB space.
Details
What to look for:
A good palette has colors that are spread somewhat uniformly in 3D.
Note: The rgl package is NOT included in "Depends" for the pals package because it can cause problems for people. You might have to manually install rgl with install.packages.
Examples
if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
pal.cube(cubehelix)
pal.cube(glasbey, n=32) # RGB, blues are too close to each other
pal.cube(glasbey, n=32, type="LUV")
pal.cube(cols25(25), type="LUV", label=TRUE)
# To open a second cube
rgl.open() # Open a new RGL device
rgl.bg(color = "white") # Setup the background color
pal.cube(colors()[c(1:152, 254:260, 362:657)]) # All R non-grey colors
} # }