I need the plot legend to appear side-by-side to the plot axes, i.e. outside of the axes and non-overlapping.
The width of the axes and the legend should adjust "automatically" so that they both fill the figure w/o them to overlap or the legend to be cut, even when using tight layout. The legend should occupy a minor portion of the figure (let's say max to 1/3 of figure width so that the remaining 2/3 are dedicated to the actual plot).
Eventually, the font of the legend entries can automatically reduce to meet the requirements.
I've read a number of answers regarding legend and bbox_to_anchor in matplotlib with no luck, among which:
how to put the legend out of the plot
moving matplotlib legend outside of the axis makes it cutoff by the figure box
I tried by creating a dedicated axes in which to put the legend so that plt.tight_layout() would do its job properly but then the legend only takes a minor portion of the dedicated axes, with the result that a lot of space is wasted. Or if there isn't enough space (the figure is too small), the legend overlaps the first axes anyway.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# generate some data
x = np.arange(1, 100)
# create 2 side-by-side axes
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1,2)
# create a plot with a long legend
for ii in range(20):
ax[0].plot(x, x**2, label='20201110_120000')
ax[0].plot(x, x, label='20201104_110000')
# grab handles and labels from the first ax and pass it to the second
hl = ax[0].get_legend_handles_labels()
leg = ax[1].legend(*hl, ncol=2)
plt.tight_layout()
I'm open to use a package different from matplotlib.
Instead of trying to plot the legend in a separate axis, you can pass loc to legend:
# create 2 side-by-side axes
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,6))
# create a plot with a long legend
for ii in range(20):
ax.plot(x, x**2, label='20201110_120000')
ax.plot(x, x, label='20201104_110000')
# grab handles and labels from the first ax and pass it to the second
ax.legend(ncol=2, loc=[1,0])
plt.tight_layout()
Output:
Related
I have a dataframe with ~120 features that I would like to examine by year. I am plotting each feature, x = year, y = feature value within a loop. Whilst these plot successfully, the charts are illegible as they are totally squashed.
I have tried using plt.tight_layout() and adjusting the figure size using plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] but sadly to no avail
for i in range(len(roll_df.columns)):
plt.subplot(len(roll_df.columns), 1, i+1)
name = roll_df.columns[i]
plt.plot(roll_df[name])
plt.title(name, y=0)
plt.yticks([])
plt.xticks([])
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()
The loop runs but all plots are so squashed on the y-axis as to become illegible:
Matplotlib will not automatically adjust the size of your figure. So if you add more subplots below each other, it will split the available space instead of extending the figure. That's why your y axes are so narrow.
You could try to define the figure size beforehand, or determine the figure size based on how many subplots you have:
n_plots = roll_df.shape[1]
fig, axes = plt.subplots(n_plots, 1, figsize=(8, 4 * n_plots), tight_layout=True)
# Then your usual part, but plot on the created axes
for i in range(n_plots):
name = roll_df.columns[i]
axes[i].plot(roll_df[name])
axes[i].title(name, y=0)
axes[i].yticks([])
axes[i].xticks([])
plt.show()
I would like to minimize white space in my figure. I have a row of sub plots where four plots share their y-axis and the last plot has a separate axis.
There are no ylabels or ticklabels for the shared axis middle panels.
tight_layout creates a lot of white space between the the middle plots as if leaving space for tick labels and ylabels but I would rather stretch the sub plots. Is this possible?
import matplotlib.gridspec as gridspec
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
fig = plt.figure()
gs = gridspec.GridSpec(1, 5, width_ratios=[4,1,4,1,2])
ax = fig.add_subplot(gs[0])
axes = [ax] + [fig.add_subplot(gs[i], sharey=ax) for i in range(1, 4)]
axes[0].plot(np.random.randint(0,100,100))
barlist=axes[1].bar([1,2],[1,20])
axes[2].plot(np.random.randint(0,100,100))
barlist=axes[3].bar([1,2],[1,20])
axes[0].set_ylabel('data')
axes.append(fig.add_subplot(gs[4]))
axes[4].plot(np.random.randint(0,5,100))
axes[4].set_ylabel('other data')
for ax in axes[1:4]:
plt.setp(ax.get_yticklabels(), visible=False)
sns.despine();
plt.tight_layout(pad=0, w_pad=0, h_pad=0);
Setting w_pad = 0 is not changing the default settings of tight_layout. You need to set something like w_pad = -2. Which produces the following figure:
You could go further, to say -3 but then you would start to get some overlap with your last plot.
Another way could be to remove plt.tight_layout() and set the boundaries yourself using
plt.subplots_adjust(left=0.065, right=0.97, top=0.96, bottom=0.065, wspace=0.14)
Though this can be a bit of a trial and error process.
Edit
A nice looking graph can be achieved by moving the ticks and the labels of the last plot to the right hand side. This answer shows you can do this by using:
ax.yaxis.tick_right()
ax.yaxis.set_label_position("right")
So for your example:
axes[4].yaxis.tick_right()
axes[4].yaxis.set_label_position("right")
In addition, you need to remove sns.despine(). Finally, there is now no need to set w_pad = -2, just use plt.tight_layout(pad=0, w_pad=0, h_pad=0)
Using this creates the following figure:
I am new to matplotlib, and I am finding it very confusing. I have spent quite a lot of time on the matplotlib tutorial website, but I still cannot really understand how to build a figure from scratch. To me, this means doing everything manually... not using the plt.plot() function, but always setting figure, axis handles.
Can anyone explain how to set up a figure from the ground up?
Right now, I have this code to generate a double y-axis plot. But my xlabels are disappearing and I dont' know why
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.plot(yearsTotal,timeseries_data1,'r-')
ax1.set_ylabel('Windspeed [m/s]')
ax1.tick_params('y',colors='r')
ax2 = ax1.twinx()
ax2.plot(yearsTotal,timeseries_data2,'b-')
ax2.set_xticks(np.arange(min(yearsTotal),max(yearsTotal)+1))
ax2.set_xticklabels(ax1.xaxis.get_majorticklabels(), rotation=90)
ax2.set_ylabel('Open water duration [days]')
ax2.tick_params('y',colors='b')
plt.title('My title')
fig.tight_layout()
plt.savefig('plots/my_figure.png',bbox_inches='tight')
plt.show()
Because you are using a twinx, it makes sense to operate only on the original axes (ax1).
Further, the ticklabels are not defined at the point where you call ax1.xaxis.get_majorticklabels().
If you want to set the ticks and ticklabels manually, you can use your own data to do so (although I wouldn't know why you'd prefer this over using the automatic labeling) by specifying a list or array
ticks = np.arange(min(yearsTotal),max(yearsTotal)+1)
ax1.set_xticks(ticks)
ax1.set_xticklabels(ticks)
Since the ticklabels are the same as the tickpositions here, you may also just do
ax1.set_xticks(np.arange(min(yearsTotal),max(yearsTotal)+1))
plt.setp(ax1.get_xticklabels(), rotation=70)
Complete example:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np; np.random.seed(1)
yearsTotal = np.arange(1977, 1999)
timeseries_data1 = np.cumsum(np.random.normal(size=len(yearsTotal)))+5
timeseries_data2 = np.cumsum(np.random.normal(size=len(yearsTotal)))+20
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots()
ax1.plot(yearsTotal,timeseries_data1,'r-')
ax1.set_ylabel('Windspeed [m/s]')
ax1.tick_params('y',colors='r')
ax1.set_xticks(np.arange(min(yearsTotal),max(yearsTotal)+1))
plt.setp(ax1.get_xticklabels(), rotation=70)
ax2 = ax1.twinx()
ax2.plot(yearsTotal,timeseries_data2,'b-')
ax2.set_ylabel('Open water duration [days]')
ax2.tick_params('y',colors='b')
plt.title('My title')
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()
Based on your code, it is not disappear, it is set (overwrite) by these two functions:
ax2.set_xticks(np.arange(min(yearsTotal),max(yearsTotal)+1))
ax2.set_xticklabels(ax1.xaxis.get_majorticklabels(), rotation=90)
set_xticks() on the axes will set the locations and set_xticklabels() will set the xtick labels with list of strings labels.
I am new to matplotlib and trying to create and save plots from pandas dataframes via a loop. Each plot should have an identical x-axis, but different y-axis lengths and labels. I have no problem creating and saving the plots with different y-axis lengths and labels, but when I create the plots, matplotlib rescales the x-axis depending on how much space is needed for the y-axis labels on the left side of the figure.
These figures are for a technical report. I plan to place one on each page of the report and I would like to have all of the x-axes take up the same amount of space on the page.
Here is an MSPaint version of what I'm getting and what I'd like to get.
Hopefully this is enough code to help. I'm sure there are lots of non-optimal parts of this.
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pylab as pl
from matplotlib import collections as mc
from matplotlib.lines import Line2D
import seaborn as sns
# elements for x-axis
start = -1600
end = 2001
interval = 200 # x-axis tick interval
xticks = [x for x in range(start, end, interval)] # create x ticks
# items needed for legend construction
lw_bins = [0,10,25,50,75,90,100] # bins for line width
lw_labels = [3,6,9,12,15,18] # line widths
def make_proxy(zvalue, scalar_mappable, **kwargs):
color = 'black'
return Line2D([0, 1], [0, 1], color=color, solid_capstyle='butt', **kwargs)
# generic image ID
img_path = r'C:\\Users\\user\\chart'
img_ID = 0
for line_subset in data:
# create line collection for this run through loop
lc = mc.LineCollection(line_subset)
# create plot and set properties
sns.set(style="ticks")
sns.set_context("notebook")
fig, ax = pl.subplots(figsize=(16, len(line_subset)*0.5)) # I want the height of the figure to change based on number of labels on y-axis
# Figure width should stay the same
ax.add_collection(lc)
ax.set_xlim(left=start, right=end)
ax.set_xticks(xticks)
ax.set_ylim(0, len(line_subset)+1)
ax.margins(0.05)
sns.despine(left=True)
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax.set_yticks(line_subset['order'])
ax.set_yticklabels(line_subset['ylabel'])
ax.tick_params(axis='y', length=0)
# legend
proxies = [make_proxy(item, lc, linewidth=item) for item in lw_labels]
ax.legend(proxies, ['0-10%', '10-25%', '25-50%', '50-75%', '75-90%', '90-100%'], bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1.0),
loc=2, ncol=2, labelspacing=1.25, handlelength=4.0, handletextpad=0.5, markerfirst=False,
columnspacing=1.0)
# title
ax.text(0, len(line_subset)+2, s=str(img_ID), fontsize=20)
# save as .png images
plt.savefig(r'C:\\Users\\user\\Desktop\\chart' + str(img_ID) + '.png', dpi=300, bbox_inches='tight')
Unless you use an axes of specifically defined aspect ratio (like in an imshow plot or by calling .set_aspect("equal")), the space taken by the axes should only depend on the figure size along that direction and the spacings set to the figure.
You are therefore pretty much asking for the default behaviour and the only thing that prevents you from obtaining that is that you use bbox_inches='tight' in the savefig command.
bbox_inches='tight' will change the figure size! So don't use it and the axes will remain constant in size. `
Your figure size, defined like figsize=(16, len(line_subset)*0.5) seems to make sense according to what I understand from the question. So what remains is to make sure the axes inside the figure are the size you want them to be. You can do that by manually placing it using fig.add_axes
fig.add_axes([left, bottom, width, height])
where left, bottom, width, height are in figure coordinates ranging from 0 to 1. Or, you can adjust the spacings outside the subplot using subplots_adjust
plt.subplots_adjust(left, bottom, right, top)
To get matching x axis for the subplots (same x axis length for each subplot) , you need to share the x axis between subplots.
See the example here https://matplotlib.org/examples/pylab_examples/shared_axis_demo.html
I'm trying to plot a figure without tickmarks or numbers on either of the axes (I use axes in the traditional sense, not the matplotlib nomenclature!). An issue I have come across is where matplotlib adjusts the x(y)ticklabels by subtracting a value N, then adds N at the end of the axis.
This may be vague, but the following simplified example highlights the issue, with '6.18' being the offending value of N:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random
prefix = 6.18
rx = [prefix+(0.001*random.random()) for i in arange(100)]
ry = [prefix+(0.001*random.random()) for i in arange(100)]
plt.plot(rx,ry,'ko')
frame1 = plt.gca()
for xlabel_i in frame1.axes.get_xticklabels():
xlabel_i.set_visible(False)
xlabel_i.set_fontsize(0.0)
for xlabel_i in frame1.axes.get_yticklabels():
xlabel_i.set_fontsize(0.0)
xlabel_i.set_visible(False)
for tick in frame1.axes.get_xticklines():
tick.set_visible(False)
for tick in frame1.axes.get_yticklines():
tick.set_visible(False)
plt.show()
The three things I would like to know are:
How to turn off this behaviour in the first place (although in most cases it is useful, it is not always!) I have looked through matplotlib.axis.XAxis and cannot find anything appropriate
How can I make N disappear (i.e. X.set_visible(False))
Is there a better way to do the above anyway? My final plot would be 4x4 subplots in a figure, if that is relevant.
Instead of hiding each element, you can hide the whole axis:
frame1.axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
frame1.axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
Or, you can set the ticks to an empty list:
frame1.axes.get_xaxis().set_ticks([])
frame1.axes.get_yaxis().set_ticks([])
In this second option, you can still use plt.xlabel() and plt.ylabel() to add labels to the axes.
If you want to hide just the axis text keeping the grid lines:
frame1 = plt.gca()
frame1.axes.xaxis.set_ticklabels([])
frame1.axes.yaxis.set_ticklabels([])
Doing set_visible(False) or set_ticks([]) will also hide the grid lines.
If you are like me and don't always retrieve the axes, ax, when plotting the figure, then a simple solution would be to do
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
I've colour coded this figure to ease the process.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
You can have full control over the figure using these commands, to complete the answer I've add also the control over the spines:
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)
# X AXIS -BORDER
ax.spines['bottom'].set_visible(False)
# BLUE
ax.set_xticklabels([])
# RED
ax.set_xticks([])
# RED AND BLUE TOGETHER
ax.axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
# Y AXIS -BORDER
ax.spines['left'].set_visible(False)
# YELLOW
ax.set_yticklabels([])
# GREEN
ax.set_yticks([])
# YELLOW AND GREEN TOGHETHER
ax.axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
I was not actually able to render an image without borders or axis data based on any of the code snippets here (even the one accepted at the answer). After digging through some API documentation, I landed on this code to render my image
plt.axis('off')
plt.tick_params(axis='both', left=False, top=False, right=False, bottom=False, labelleft=False, labeltop=False, labelright=False, labelbottom=False)
plt.savefig('foo.png', dpi=100, bbox_inches='tight', pad_inches=0.0)
I used the tick_params call to basically shut down any extra information that might be rendered and I have a perfect graph in my output file.
Somewhat of an old thread but, this seems to be a faster method using the latest version of matplotlib:
set the major formatter for the x-axis
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.NullFormatter())
One trick could be setting the color of tick labels as white to hide it!
plt.xticks(color='w')
plt.yticks(color='w')
or to be more generalized (#Armin Okić), you can set it as "None".
When using the object oriented API, the Axes object has two useful methods for removing the axis text, set_xticklabels() and set_xticks().
Say you create a plot using
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1)
ax.plot(x, y)
If you simply want to remove the tick labels, you could use
ax.set_xticklabels([])
or to remove the ticks completely, you could use
ax.set_xticks([])
These methods are useful for specifying exactly where you want the ticks and how you want them labeled. Passing an empty list results in no ticks, or no labels, respectively.
You could simply set xlabel to None, straight in your axis. Below an working example using seaborn
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
tips = sns.load_dataset("tips")
ax = sns.boxplot(x="day", y="total_bill", data=tips)
ax.set(xlabel=None)
plt.show()
Just do this in case you have subplots
fig, axs = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(16, 8))
ax[0].set_yticklabels([]) # x-axis
ax[0].set_xticklabels([]) # y-axis