Styling with cycler

Demo of custom property-cycle settings to control colors and other style
properties for multi-line plots.

::: tip Note

More complete documentation of the cycler API can be found
here.

:::

This example demonstrates two different APIs:

  1. Setting the default rc parameter specifying the property cycle.
    This affects all subsequent axes (but not axes already created).
  2. Setting the property cycle for a single pair of axes.
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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.

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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

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print(yy.shape)

Out:

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(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.

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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.

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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()

sphx_glr_color_cycle_001

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:

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axes.prop_cycle : cycler(color='bgrcmyk')

Cycling through multiple properties

You can add cyclers:

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from cycler import cycler
cc = (cycler(color=list('rgb')) +
      cycler(linestyle=['-', '--', '-.']))
for d in cc:
    print(d)

Results in:

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{'color': 'r', 'linestyle': '-'}
{'color': 'g', 'linestyle': '--'}
{'color': 'b', 'linestyle': '-.'}

You can multiply cyclers:

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from cycler import cycler
cc = (cycler(color=list('rgb')) *
      cycler(linestyle=['-', '--', '-.']))
for d in cc:
    print(d)

Results in:

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{'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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