In the Houdini colorbar HDA under "color options", set the menus like this...
Details:
png file
/svs/share/houdini/cbars/images/png/gray-red.png
tex file
/svs/share/houdini/cbars/images/tex/gray-red.tex
definition
/svs/share/houdini/cbars/definitions/svs/gray-red.csv
credit
unknown
reference
unknown