Dynamically Expanding Figure Box for Legends Outside Axes: A Solution

Dynamically Resizing Figure Box for Legends

When placing legends outside of the plot axes in Matplotlib, they can be cut off by the figure box. This issue arises when the legend length exceeds the axis size.

Avoidance of Axis Shrinking

Unlike other solutions, avoiding axis shrinking is preferred to maintain data visibility. Shrinking the axes reduces data readability, especially when dealing with complex plots with extensive legends.

Dynamic Figure Box Expansion

To dynamically expand the figure box to accommodate the legend, adjust the savefig call to the following:

fig.savefig('samplefigure', bbox_extra_artists=(lgd,), bbox_inches='tight')

where bbox_extra_artists considers additional artists (in this case, the legend) when determining the bounding box size.

Example Code

The following code generates a plot with a legend outside the axes and automatically resizes the figure box using bbox_extra_artists:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

x = np.arange(-2*np.pi, 2*np.pi, 0.1)
fig = plt.figure(1)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.plot(x, np.sin(x), label='Sine')
ax.plot(x, np.cos(x), label='Cosine')
ax.plot(x, np.arctan(x), label='Inverse tan')
handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
lgd = ax.legend(handles, labels, loc='upper center', bbox_to_anchor=(0.5,-0.1))
text = ax.text(-0.2,1.05, "Aribitrary text", transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.set_title("Trigonometry")
ax.grid('on')
fig.savefig('samplefigure', bbox_extra_artists=(lgd,text), bbox_inches='tight')

This code results in the plot with the legend outside the axes, and the figure box is dynamically adjusted to accommodate the legend size.

Conclusion

By utilizing the bbox_extra_artists parameter in savefig, you can dynamically expand the figure box to ensure that legends outside the axes are not cut off. This approach provides a convenient and effective solution without the drawbacks of axis shrinking.

The above is the detailed content of Dynamically Expanding Figure Box for Legends Outside Axes: A Solution. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!