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()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_001.png
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()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_002.png
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=2, ncols=1)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_003.png
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2)
example_plot(ax1)
example_plot(ax2)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_004.png
fig, axs = plt.subplots(nrows=3, ncols=3)
for ax in axs.flat:
    example_plot(ax)
plt.tight_layout()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_005.png
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()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_006.png
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()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_007.png
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()
../../_images/sphx_glr_demo_tight_layout_008.png

References

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

Out:

<function subplot2grid at 0x7fdbbffeaf70>

Total running time of the script: ( 0 minutes 1.412 seconds)

Keywords: matplotlib code example, codex, python plot, pyplot Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery