if you are tired of trying colormap(xxx) at the command prompt to find the appropriate colormap for your figure - try LUTBAR
LUTBAR creates a colormap toolbar with colormap icons and context menu from ML?s own colormaps and/or additional colormaps for fast colormap switching in a figure
LUTBAR comes with various options to define those colormaps that you want to show up on the bar/menu

an additional utility, LUT2MAT, converts NIH-IMAGE type color lookup tables to typical ML colormap files of the form xxx_lut.m, which are callable with any number of desired colors, ie, xxx_lut(nrcols)

see the accompanying published ML file for instructions and an example, and type
> help lutbar
> help lut2mat
for more information