fig.legend method and axes.legend method behaves differently?

Hi,
I tried to make a plot with two subplots but only one legend since the two subplots express the same set of information.
I put the legend outside of the two subplots for better interpretation. I have found that by using fig.legend instead of
the ax.legend method. In the saved plot, the legend box are just cut off.

I tried to fix this by using bbox_extra_artists argument in the savefig method, following the instruction
here<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10101700/moving-matplotlib-legend-outside-of-the-axis-makes-it-cutoff-by-the-figure-box>.
But it does not work. The following code illustrate the problem,

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import matplotlib as mpl

x = np.arange(-5, 5, 0.1)
y1 = np.sin(x)
y2 = np.cos(x)

y3 = np.sin(2*x)
y4 = np.cos(2*x)

fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(ncols=1, nrows=2, figsize=(10, 6))

ax1.plot(x, y1, label='sin')
ax1.plot(x, y2, label='cos')

ax2.plot(x, y3, label='sin')
ax2.plot(x, y4, label='cos')

handles, labels = ax1.get_legend_handles_labels()

# legend = fig.legend(handles, labels, loc='lower left', ncol=2, frameon=False,
# bbox_to_anchor=(0.12, 0.88))
# plt.savefig('test.jpg', bbox_extra_artists=(legend,), bbox_inches='tight')

legend = ax1.legend(handles, labels, ncol=2, frameon=False,
                    loc='lower left', bbox_to_anchor=(-0.01, 1.0))
plt.savefig('test.jpg', bbox_inches='tight')

If I use the above code, the generated image is fine. But if I use the commented code instead, the legend is gone in the generated image.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/matplotlib-users/attachments/20180107/d684e24e/attachment-0001.html>

It looks like the bbox_to_anchor argument is causing the problem. If
you try this:

legend = fig.legend(handles, labels,
                     loc='upper center',
                     ncol=2, frameon=False,)
plt.savefig('test.jpg', bbox_extra_artists=(legend,),
             bbox_inches='tight')

it works, with 'upper center' or 'lower center'.

Eric

···

On 2018/01/07 6:16 AM, Henry east wrote:

Hi,
I tried to make a plot with two subplots but only one legend since the
two subplots express the same set of information.
I put the legend outside of the two subplots for better interpretation.
I have found that by using |fig.legend| instead of
the |ax.legend| method. In the saved plot, the legend box are just cut off.

I tried to fix this by using |bbox_extra_artists| argument in the
>savefig> method, following the instruction
here
<python - Moving matplotlib legend outside of the axis makes it cutoff by the figure box - Stack Overflow.
But it does not work. The following code illustrate the problem,