Resizing axes with tight layout

tight_layout attempts to resize subplots in a figure so that there are no overlaps between axes objects and labels on the axes.

See Tight Layout guide for more details and Constrained Layout Guide for an alternative.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import itertools
import warnings


fontsizes = itertools.cycle([8, 16, 24, 32])


def example_plot(ax):
    ax.plot([1, 2])
    ax.set_xlabel('x-label', fontsize=next(fontsizes))
    ax.set_ylabel('y-label', fontsize=next(fontsizes))
    ax.set_title('Title', fontsize=next(fontsizes))

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
example_plot(ax)
plt.tight_layout()

fig, ((ax1, ax2), (ax3, ax4)) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=2)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)
example_plot(ax4)
plt.tight_layout()

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=1)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()

fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=3, ncols=3)
for row in axes:
    for ax in row:
        example_plot(ax)
plt.tight_layout()

fig = plt.figure()

ax1 = plt.subplot(221)
ax2 = plt.subplot(223)
ax3 = plt.subplot(122)

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)

plt.tight_layout()

fig = plt.figure()

ax1 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (0, 0))
ax2 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (0, 1), colspan=2)
ax3 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (1, 0), colspan=2, rowspan=2)
ax4 = plt.subplot2grid((3, 3), (1, 2), rowspan=2)

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)
example_plot(ax4)

plt.tight_layout()

plt.show()

fig = plt.figure()

gs1 = fig.add_gridspec(3, 1)
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[0])
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[1])
ax3 = fig.add_subplot(gs1[2])

example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
example_plot(ax3)

gs1.tight_layout(fig, rect=[None, None, 0.45, None])

gs2 = fig.add_gridspec(2, 1)
ax4 = fig.add_subplot(gs2[0])
ax5 = fig.add_subplot(gs2[1])

example_plot(ax4)
example_plot(ax5)

with warnings.catch_warnings():
    # gs2.tight_layout cannot handle the subplots from the first gridspec
    # (gs1), so it will raise a warning. We are going to match the gridspecs
    # manually so we can filter the warning away.
    warnings.simplefilter("ignore", UserWarning)
    gs2.tight_layout(fig, rect=[0.45, None, None, None])

# now match the top and bottom of two gridspecs.
top = min(gs1.top, gs2.top)
bottom = max(gs1.bottom, gs2.bottom)

gs1.update(top=top, bottom=bottom)
gs2.update(top=top, bottom=bottom)

plt.show()

---

References

The use of the following functions and methods is shown in this example:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.pyplot.tight_layout
matplotlib.figure.Figure.tight_layout
matplotlib.figure.Figure.add_gridspec
matplotlib.figure.Figure.add_subplot
matplotlib.pyplot.subplot2grid

Out:

<function subplot2grid at 0x7fb11b42c488>