CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmatplotlibcolors
Aecturus
Aecturus

Reputation: 281

Python matplotlib Colorfunction

I would like to use a ColorFunction similar to that in Mathematica for my plots in python.

In other words, I would like to call pyplot.plot(x, y, color=c), where c is a vector, defining the color of each data point.

Is there any way to achieve this using the matplotlib library?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 747

Answers (2)

Spenser Talkington
Spenser Talkington

Reputation: 1

While I agree with @SparkAndShine that there is no way to parameterize the color of one line, it is possible to color many lines to create a visual effect that is largely the same. This is at the heart of a demo in the MatPlotLib documentation. However, this demo is not the simplest implementation of this principle. Here is an alternate demo based on @SparkAndShine's response:

colored sine (can't post as image since I don't have the reputation)

Source code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import cm

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

nrof_points = 100 
x = np.linspace(0, 10, nrof_points)
y = np.sin(x)
colors = cm.rainbow(np.linspace(0, 1, nrof_points))     # generate a bunch of colors

# draw points
for idx in range(0,np.shape(x)[0]-2,1):
    ax.plot(x[idx:idx+1+1], y[idx:idx+1+1], color=colors[idx])

# add a grid and show
plt.grid()

plt.show()

Upvotes: 0

SparkAndShine
SparkAndShine

Reputation: 18047

To the best of my knowledge, there is no equivalent in Matplotlib, but we can get the similar result following two steps: draw points with varied colors and draw the line.

Here is a demo.

enter image description here

The source code,

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import cm
import random

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

nrof_points = 100 
x = np.linspace(0, 10, nrof_points)
y = np.sin(x)
colors = cm.rainbow(np.linspace(0, 1, nrof_points))     # generate a bunch of colors

# draw points
for idx, point in enumerate(zip(x, y)):
    ax.plot(point[0], point[1], 'o', color=colors[idx], markersize=10)

# draw the line
ax.plot(x, y, 'k')
plt.grid()

plt.show()

Upvotes: 2

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