I use latex in matplotlib by setting
plt.rcParams.update({'mathtext.fontset': 'stix'})
plt.rcParams.update({'font.family': 'STIXGeneral'})
I am using the letter $\ell$ very often in my research and there is a small detail bothering me. As you can see below, matplotlib renders the symbol with the little loop smaller and the letter more slanted. To me it almost looks like a vertically stretched $e$. I tried using the "\mathrm{\ell}" command instead but it did not change anything.
Is there any way I could get the symbol to look normal?
PS: it looks like stackoverflow is not detecting the math mode $ for some reason. If you know how to fix it (or if I am doing something wrong) please point it out or edit the question. Thanks!
The reason is the font you are using in matplotlib. With the following settings, for example, you get the same letter as in overleaf:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# Example data
t = np.arange(0.0, 10, 1)
s = np.arange(0.0, 10, 1)
plt.rc('text', usetex=True)
plt.rc('font', family='serif')
plt.xlabel(r'$\ell$', fontsize=30)
plt.ylabel(r'$\ell$', fontsize=30)
plt.plot(t, s)
plt.show()
You get:
However, In Jupyterlab I could not reproduce. It used the overleaf fonts even with your settings.
This proved to be the simplest solution for me. Thanks the others for pointing out the font being the issue.
Rather than
plt.rcParams.update({'mathtext.fontset': 'stix'})
plt.rcParams.update({'font.family': 'STIXGeneral'})
I now write the first line as
plt.rcParams.update({'mathtext.fontset': 'cm'})
which works like charm. This is helpful if you are someone like me not using TeX but just the mathtext matplotlib built-in function.
I am having problems while exporting eps files from matplot lib. I want to edit in Corel Draw an eps file that was exported from matplotlib using, for example:
plt.savefig('test01.eps', format='eps', dpi=600)
After opening the file in corel, I get the following image
as it can be seen, there is a problem with letters. They are imported with wrong size and positioning; also they are converted to curves (although I have explicitly said to Corel to import the as text).
Importing the eps file with Microsoft Words gives the same results. It seems to be a matplotlib problem.
I have tried changing to Qt4Agg using
mpl.use('Qt4Agg')
font = {'family' : 'Times New Roman','weight' : 'normal','size': 12}
mpl.rc('font', **font)
but it doesn't work...
Anyone having the same issue?
Add these two lines:
matplotlib.rcParams['text.usetex'] = True
matplotlib.rcParams['text.latex.unicode'] = True
I would like to produce plots using matplotlib (through anaconda-spider installed on os x yosemite) and put labels on it not interpreted by tex.
Here is the sample code:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import matplotlib.pyplot as pp
my_rc_param = {'text.usetex': False}
pp.figure()
pp.rcParams.update(my_rc_param)
pp.plot(range(10))
pp.xlabel('$x$')
I would like to see exactly the string $x$ as x label. In turn, I get the math-mode latex x.
I have also tried, unsuccessfully, to put the following preamble:
from matplotlib import rc
rc('text', usetex=False)
Is there a way to force a plain interpreter?
Or should I consider this as a bug?
You are not getting any latex mode. You are simply using the mathtex feature of matplotlib. Using latex is a different thing. I checked whether it is possible to switch off mathtex for matplotlib, and there is a quiet recent issue on this (see here). However, the way to sort out this problem consist is avoiding the math just escaping the $ symbol with '\':
pp.xlabel('\$x\$')
Just remove all the stuff related to the text.usetex as you are trying to do a complete different thing here.
I'm using python 2.7 on Ubuntu to draw charts from text files containing data.
My point is, when using python executables in shell, I have no problem recording plots, but if I want them shown on my screen instead I have to go through the graphic interface. If possible, I would very much like to skip that part and get a dynamic display that I can interact with (as if I were to run my script from a python shell)!!
a MWE of what i'm doing is :
MWE
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
with open('filename','r') as myfile:
DATA = np.genfromtxt(myfile,unpack=True)
fig = plt.figure()
... my plot configuration ...
plt.savefig("image_name"+'.png')
plt.close()
end of MWE
Using this script image_name.png appears in my repertory. I tried replacing the last 2 lines with plt.plot() and plt.draw() but nothing happened.
Many thanks!
Michel
(edited)
Is there a way to save a Matplotlib figure such that it can be re-opened and have typical interaction restored? (Like the .fig format in MATLAB?)
I find myself running the same scripts many times to generate these interactive figures. Or I'm sending my colleagues multiple static PNG files to show different aspects of a plot. I'd rather send the figure object and have them interact with it themselves.
I just found out how to do this. The "experimental pickle support" mentioned by #pelson works quite well.
Try this:
# Plot something
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig,ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot([1,2,3],[10,-10,30])
After your interactive tweaking, save the figure object as a binary file:
import pickle
pickle.dump(fig, open('FigureObject.fig.pickle', 'wb')) # This is for Python 3 - py2 may need `file` instead of `open`
Later, open the figure and the tweaks should be saved and GUI interactivity should be present:
import pickle
figx = pickle.load(open('FigureObject.fig.pickle', 'rb'))
figx.show() # Show the figure, edit it, etc.!
You can even extract the data from the plots:
data = figx.axes[0].lines[0].get_data()
(It works for lines, pcolor & imshow - pcolormesh works with some tricks to reconstruct the flattened data.)
I got the excellent tip from Saving Matplotlib Figures Using Pickle.
As of Matplotlib 1.2, we now have experimental pickle support. Give that a go and see if it works well for your case. If you have any issues, please let us know on the Matplotlib mailing list or by opening an issue on github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.
This would be a great feature, but AFAIK it isn't implemented in Matplotlib and likely would be difficult to implement yourself due to the way figures are stored.
I'd suggest either (a) separate processing the data from generating the figure (which saves data with a unique name) and write a figure generating script (loading a specified file of the saved data) and editing as you see fit or (b) save as PDF/SVG/PostScript format and edit in some fancy figure editor like Adobe Illustrator (or Inkscape).
EDIT post Fall 2012: As others pointed out below (though mentioning here as this is the accepted answer), Matplotlib since version 1.2 allowed you to pickle figures. As the release notes state, it is an experimental feature and does not support saving a figure in one matplotlib version and opening in another. It's also generally unsecure to restore a pickle from an untrusted source.
For sharing/later editing plots (that require significant data processing first and may need to be tweaked months later say during peer review for a scientific publication), I still recommend the workflow of (1) have a data processing script that before generating a plot saves the processed data (that goes into your plot) into a file, and (2) have a separate plot generation script (that you adjust as necessary) to recreate the plot. This way for each plot you can quickly run a script and re-generate it (and quickly copy over your plot settings with new data). That said, pickling a figure could be convenient for short term/interactive/exploratory data analysis.
Why not just send the Python script? MATLAB's .fig files require the recipient to have MATLAB to display them, so that's about equivalent to sending a Python script that requires Matplotlib to display.
Alternatively (disclaimer: I haven't tried this yet), you could try pickling the figure:
import pickle
output = open('interactive figure.pickle', 'wb')
pickle.dump(gcf(), output)
output.close()
Good question. Here is the doc text from pylab.save:
pylab no longer provides a save function, though the old pylab
function is still available as matplotlib.mlab.save (you can still
refer to it in pylab as "mlab.save"). However, for plain text
files, we recommend numpy.savetxt. For saving numpy arrays,
we recommend numpy.save, and its analog numpy.load, which are
available in pylab as np.save and np.load.
I figured out a relatively simple way (yet slightly unconventional) to save my matplotlib figures. It works like this:
import libscript
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
t = np.arange(0.0, 2.0, 0.01)
s = 1 + np.sin(2*np.pi*t)
#<plot>
plt.plot(t, s)
plt.xlabel('time (s)')
plt.ylabel('voltage (mV)')
plt.title('About as simple as it gets, folks')
plt.grid(True)
plt.show()
#</plot>
save_plot(fileName='plot_01.py',obj=sys.argv[0],sel='plot',ctx=libscript.get_ctx(ctx_global=globals(),ctx_local=locals()))
with function save_plot defined like this (simple version to understand the logic):
def save_plot(fileName='',obj=None,sel='',ctx={}):
"""
Save of matplolib plot to a stand alone python script containing all the data and configuration instructions to regenerate the interactive matplotlib figure.
Parameters
----------
fileName : [string] Path of the python script file to be created.
obj : [object] Function or python object containing the lines of code to create and configure the plot to be saved.
sel : [string] Name of the tag enclosing the lines of code to create and configure the plot to be saved.
ctx : [dict] Dictionary containing the execution context. Values for variables not defined in the lines of code for the plot will be fetched from the context.
Returns
-------
Return ``'done'`` once the plot has been saved to a python script file. This file contains all the input data and configuration to re-create the original interactive matplotlib figure.
"""
import os
import libscript
N_indent=4
src=libscript.get_src(obj=obj,sel=sel)
src=libscript.prepend_ctx(src=src,ctx=ctx,debug=False)
src='\n'.join([' '*N_indent+line for line in src.split('\n')])
if(os.path.isfile(fileName)): os.remove(fileName)
with open(fileName,'w') as f:
f.write('import sys\n')
f.write('sys.dont_write_bytecode=True\n')
f.write('def main():\n')
f.write(src+'\n')
f.write('if(__name__=="__main__"):\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'main()\n')
return 'done'
or defining function save_plot like this (better version using zip compression to produce lighter figure files):
def save_plot(fileName='',obj=None,sel='',ctx={}):
import os
import json
import zlib
import base64
import libscript
N_indent=4
level=9#0 to 9, default: 6
src=libscript.get_src(obj=obj,sel=sel)
obj=libscript.load_obj(src=src,ctx=ctx,debug=False)
bin=base64.b64encode(zlib.compress(json.dumps(obj),level))
if(os.path.isfile(fileName)): os.remove(fileName)
with open(fileName,'w') as f:
f.write('import sys\n')
f.write('sys.dont_write_bytecode=True\n')
f.write('def main():\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'import base64\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'import zlib\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'import json\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'import libscript\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'bin="'+str(bin)+'"\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'obj=json.loads(zlib.decompress(base64.b64decode(bin)))\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'libscript.exec_obj(obj=obj,tempfile=False)\n')
f.write('if(__name__=="__main__"):\n')
f.write(' '*N_indent+'main()\n')
return 'done'
This makes use a module libscript of my own, which mostly relies on modules inspect and ast. I can try to share it on Github if interest is expressed (it would first require some cleanup and me to get started with Github).
The idea behind this save_plot function and libscript module is to fetch the python instructions that create the figure (using module inspect), analyze them (using module ast) to extract all variables, functions and modules import it relies on, extract these from the execution context and serialize them as python instructions (code for variables will be like t=[0.0,2.0,0.01] ... and code for modules will be like import matplotlib.pyplot as plt ...) prepended to the figure instructions. The resulting python instructions are saved as a python script whose execution will re-build the original matplotlib figure.
As you can imagine, this works well for most (if not all) matplotlib figures.
If you are looking to save python plots as an interactive figure to modify and share with others like MATLAB .fig file then you can try to use the following code. Here z_data.values is just a numpy ndarray and so you can use the same code to plot and save your own data. No need of using pandas then.
The file generated here can be opened and interactively modified by anyone with or without python just by clicking on it and opening in browsers like Chrome/Firefox/Edge etc.
import plotly.graph_objects as go
import pandas as pd
z_data=pd.read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plotly/datasets/master/api_docs/mt_bruno_elevation.csv')
fig = go.Figure(data=[go.Surface(z=z_data.values)])
fig.update_layout(title='Mt Bruno Elevation', autosize=False,
width=500, height=500,
margin=dict(l=65, r=50, b=65, t=90))
fig.show()
fig.write_html("testfile.html")