Tips and tricks with matplotlib that I found useful during my PhD
I recommend making one for each journal submission, allowing you to toggle options specific for each journal.
- This matplotlibrc requires latex. If you dont want to use latex you can turn it off by changing
text.usetex : False
example to be added later I don't like matplotlib defaults for error bars. I like to have the symbols on top of the error bars, and I only want to see error bars that are outside of the symbol. To do this, I make layered plots using zorder. On the bottom layer I plot the error bar using the errorbar method. Above that layer, I plot white symbols of the same symbol type to hide the error bars behind. Above that layer I plot the actual symbols, and I add the legend key on this layer too.
Usually you make a legend to a plot with
ax.legend(**kwargs)
Some useful keyword arguments are below
- creating legend boxes:
kwargs = dict(edgecolor='inherit', frameon=True, fancybox=False)- you can play with the fancybox argument to see if you like it
- adding space between legend entries:
kwargs = dict(handletextpad=0.2)- This is typically useful when your legend entries are all lines, and the labels get too close to the legend entries