Note
Click here to download the full example code
Styling with cycler¶
Demo of custom property-cycle settings to control colors and other style properties for multi-line plots.
Note
More complete documentation of the cycler
API can be found
here.
This example demonstrates two different APIs:
- Setting the default rc parameter specifying the property cycle. This affects all subsequent axes (but not axes already created).
- Setting the property cycle for a single pair of axes.
from cycler import cycler
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
First we'll generate some sample data, in this case, four offset sine curves.
x = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 50)
offsets = np.linspace(0, 2 * np.pi, 4, endpoint=False)
yy = np.transpose([np.sin(x + phi) for phi in offsets])
Now yy
has shape
print(yy.shape)
Out:
(50, 4)
So yy[:, i]
will give you the i
-th offset sine curve. Let's set the
default prop_cycle
using matplotlib.pyplot.rc()
. We'll combine a
color cycler and a linestyle cycler by adding (+
) two cycler
's
together. See the bottom of this tutorial for more information about
combining different cyclers.
default_cycler = (cycler(color=['r', 'g', 'b', 'y']) +
cycler(linestyle=['-', '--', ':', '-.']))
plt.rc('lines', linewidth=4)
plt.rc('axes', prop_cycle=default_cycler)
Now we'll generate a figure with two axes, one on top of the other. On the
first axis, we'll plot with the default cycler. On the second axis, we'll
set the prop_cycle
using matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_prop_cycle()
,
which will only set the prop_cycle
for this matplotlib.axes.Axes
instance. We'll use a second cycler
that combines a color cycler and a
linewidth cycler.
custom_cycler = (cycler(color=['c', 'm', 'y', 'k']) +
cycler(lw=[1, 2, 3, 4]))
fig, (ax0, ax1) = plt.subplots(nrows=2)
ax0.plot(yy)
ax0.set_title('Set default color cycle to rgby')
ax1.set_prop_cycle(custom_cycler)
ax1.plot(yy)
ax1.set_title('Set axes color cycle to cmyk')
# Add a bit more space between the two plots.
fig.subplots_adjust(hspace=0.3)
plt.show()
Setting prop_cycle
in the matplotlibrc
file or style files¶
Remember, if you want to set a custom cycler in your
.matplotlibrc
file or a style file (style.mplstyle
), you can set the
axes.prop_cycle
property:
axes.prop_cycle : cycler(color='bgrcmyk')
Cycling through multiple properties¶
You can add cyclers:
Results in:
{'color': 'r', 'linestyle': '-'}
{'color': 'g', 'linestyle': '--'}
{'color': 'b', 'linestyle': '-.'}
You can multiply cyclers:
Results in:
{'color': 'r', 'linestyle': '-'}
{'color': 'r', 'linestyle': '--'}
{'color': 'r', 'linestyle': '-.'}
{'color': 'g', 'linestyle': '-'}
{'color': 'g', 'linestyle': '--'}
{'color': 'g', 'linestyle': '-.'}
{'color': 'b', 'linestyle': '-'}
{'color': 'b', 'linestyle': '--'}
{'color': 'b', 'linestyle': '-.'}
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