CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmatplotlib
Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 5625

How to adjust padding with cutoff or overlapping labels

Updated MRE with subplots

fig, axes = plt.subplots(ncols=2, nrows=2, figsize=(8, 6))
axes = axes.flatten()

for ax in axes:
    ax.set_ylabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_b}{x_a-x_c}\right)$')
    ax.set_xlabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_d}{x_a-x_e}\right)$')

plt.show()

enter image description here

Original

I am plotting a dataset using matplotlib where I have an xlabel that is quite "tall" (it's a formula rendered in TeX that contains a fraction and is therefore has the height equivalent of a couple of lines of text).

In any case, the bottom of the formula is always cut off when I draw the figures. Changing figure size doesn't seem to help this, and I haven't been able to figure out how to shift the x-axis "up" to make room for the xlabel. Something like that would be a reasonable temporary solution, but what would be nice would be to have a way to make matplotlib recognize automatically that the label is cut off and resize accordingly.

Here's an example of what I mean:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.figure()
plt.ylabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_b}{x_a-x_c}\right)$')
plt.xlabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_d}{x_a-x_e}\right)$', fontsize=50)
plt.title('Example with matplotlib 3.4.2\nMRE no longer an issue')
plt.show()

enter image description here

The entire ylabel is visible, however, the xlabel is cut off at the bottom.

In the case this is a machine-specific problem, I am running this on OSX 10.6.8 with matplotlib 1.0.0

Upvotes: 498

Views: 572044

Answers (9)

Jody Klymak
Jody Klymak

Reputation: 5913

The more modern suggestion would be to use layout='constrained'. It won't be much different in this case, but is more flexible than layout='tight'.

fig, axes = plt.subplots(ncols=2, nrows=2, figsize=(8, 6),
                         layout='constrained')
axes = axes.flatten()

for ax in axes:
    ax.set_ylabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_b}{x_a-x_c}\right)$')
    ax.set_xlabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_d}{x_a-x_e}\right)$')

plt.show()

Upvotes: 2

tillsten
tillsten

Reputation: 14868

Use:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(bottom=0.15)

# alternate option without .gcf
plt.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.15)

to make room for the label, where plt.gcf() means get the current figure. plt.gca(), which gets the current Axes, can also be used.

Edit:

Since I gave the answer, matplotlib has added the plt.tight_layout() function.

See matplotlib Tutorials: Tight Layout Guide

So I suggest using it:

fig, axes = plt.subplots(ncols=2, nrows=2, figsize=(8, 6))
axes = axes.flatten()

for ax in axes:
    ax.set_ylabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_b}{x_a-x_c}\right)$')
    ax.set_xlabel(r'$\ln\left(\frac{x_a-x_d}{x_a-x_e}\right)$')

plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

enter image description here

Upvotes: 685

help
help

Reputation: 1

You need to use sizzors to modify the axis-range:

import sizzors as sizzors_module

sizzors_module.reshape_the_axis(plt).save("literlymylief.tiff")

Upvotes: -4

Guido
Guido

Reputation: 6722

In case you want to store it to a file, you solve it using bbox_inches="tight" argument:

plt.savefig('myfile.png', bbox_inches="tight")

Upvotes: 354

Jordan Edmunds
Jordan Edmunds

Reputation: 139

There is also a way to do this using the OOP interface, applying tight_layout directly to a figure:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
fig.set_tight_layout(True)

https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/figure_api.html

Upvotes: 8

Mohamed Ali Mimouni
Mohamed Ali Mimouni

Reputation: 131

for some reason sharex was set to True so I turned it back to False and it worked fine.

df.plot(........,sharex=False)

Upvotes: 0

dgoodman1
dgoodman1

Reputation: 316

plt.autoscale() worked for me.

Upvotes: 10

Amit Moscovich
Amit Moscovich

Reputation: 2898

An easy option is to configure matplotlib to automatically adjust the plot size. It works perfectly for me and I'm not sure why it's not activated by default.

Method 1

Set this in your matplotlibrc file

figure.autolayout : True

See here for more information on customizing the matplotlibrc file: http://matplotlib.org/users/customizing.html

Method 2

Update the rcParams during runtime like this

from matplotlib import rcParams
rcParams.update({'figure.autolayout': True})

The advantage of using this approach is that your code will produce the same graphs on differently-configured machines.

Upvotes: 205

Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner

Reputation: 3740

You can also set custom padding as defaults in your $HOME/.matplotlib/matplotlib_rc as follows. In the example below I have modified both the bottom and left out-of-the-box padding:

# The figure subplot parameters.  All dimensions are a fraction of the
# figure width or height
figure.subplot.left  : 0.1 #left side of the subplots of the figure
#figure.subplot.right : 0.9 
figure.subplot.bottom : 0.15
...

Upvotes: 7

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