Labeling/distinguishing lots of curves on a single plot

Community matplotlib-users
1

Hello,

I have a plot with lots of curves on it (say 30), and I would like to have some way of distinguishing the curves from each other. Just plotting them works well for a few curves because they come out as different colors unless you specify otherwise, but if you do too many you start getting repeats is there a way to have matplotlib also vary the line style that it automatically assigns? Or perhaps someone has another way of distinguishing lots of curves?

Best Regards,
John

2

Here are a couple of functions you might try, with a few colors and line styles I use:

import itertools

from pylab import *

COLORS = [‘#990033’, ‘#0000FF’, ‘#00FF00’, ‘#F79E00’,

‘#ff00ff’, ‘#0080FF’, ‘#FF0000’, ‘#2D0668’,

‘#2EB42E’, ‘#ff6633’, ‘#8000ff’, ‘#666633’,

‘#cc0077’, ‘#099499’, ‘#996633’, ‘#000000’]

def new_stylecolor_iter():

Use these to alternate markers, or use all the styles.

Combine them into the call to ‘itertools.product’ and

then add the appropriate kwargs to the call to ‘plot’

#markers = itertools.cycle(lines.Line2D.markers.keys())

#styles = itertools.cycle(lines.Line2D.lineStyles.keys())

alternate colors first, line styles second

sc = itertools.product([‘-’, ‘:’, ‘–’, ‘-.’], COLORS)

return sc

def line_plot_alternate():

sc = new_stylecolor_iter()

for i in xrange(0,40):

style, color = sc.next()

plot(xrange(0,20), randn(20), label=str(i), linewidth=3, linestyle=style, color=color)

legend()

if name == “main”:

line_plot_alternate()

show()

···

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 3:06 PM, John Salvatier <jsalvati@…1342…> wrote:

Hello,

I have a plot with lots of curves on it (say 30), and I would like to have some way of distinguishing the curves from each other. Just plotting them works well for a few curves because they come out as different colors unless you specify otherwise, but if you do too many you start getting repeats is there a way to have matplotlib also vary the line style that it automatically assigns? Or perhaps someone has another way of distinguishing lots of curves?

Best Regards,
John

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3

Hi John,

Here is a simple way to do it.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()

ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

colors = (‘red’,‘green’,‘blue’,‘yellow’,‘orange’)

linestyles = (’-’,’–’,’:’)

linewidths = (0.5,2)

y = np.random.randn(100,30)

x = range(y.shape[0])

i = 0

for c in colors:

for ls in linestyles:

    for lw in linewidths:

        ax.plot(x,y[:,i],c=c,ls=ls,lw=lw)

    i+=1

plt.show()

···

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4

Thanks!

···

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Aman Thakral <aman.thakral@…287…> wrote:

Hi John,

Here is a simple way to do it.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()

ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

colors = (‘red’,‘green’,‘blue’,‘yellow’,‘orange’)

linestyles = (‘-’,‘–’,‘:’)

linewidths = (0.5,2)

y = np.random.randn(100,30)

x = range(y.shape[0])

i = 0

for c in colors:

for ls in linestyles:

    for lw in linewidths:

        ax.plot(x,y[:,i],c=c,ls=ls,lw=lw)

    i+=1

plt.show()

On 10-08-23 03:06 PM, John Salvatier wrote:

Hello,

I have a plot with lots of curves on it (say 30), and I would like to
have some way of distinguishing the curves from each other. Just
plotting them works well for a few curves because they come out as
different colors unless you specify otherwise, but if you do too many
you start getting repeats is there a way to have matplotlib also vary
the line style that it automatically assigns? Or perhaps someone has
another way of distinguishing lots of curves?

Best Regards,

John

Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom™ Developer Program
Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future.
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5

By the way, I found that the following generator expression made things easy:

def styles():
return ( {‘c’ : color, ‘ls’ : style, ‘lw’ : width} for color, style, width in itertools.product(colors, linestyles, linewidths))

then you can do something like

for result, style in zip(results, styles()):
pylab.plot(result[i], **style)

···

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 1:22 PM, John Salvatier <jsalvati@…1342…> wrote:

Thanks!

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Aman Thakral <aman.thakral@…287…> wrote:

Hi John,

Here is a simple way to do it.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()

ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

colors = (‘red’,‘green’,‘blue’,‘yellow’,‘orange’)

linestyles = (‘-’,‘–’,‘:’)

linewidths = (0.5,2)

y = np.random.randn(100,30)

x = range(y.shape[0])

i = 0

for c in colors:

for ls in linestyles:

    for lw in linewidths:

        ax.plot(x,y[:,i],c=c,ls=ls,lw=lw)

    i+=1

plt.show()

On 10-08-23 03:06 PM, John Salvatier wrote:

Hello,

I have a plot with lots of curves on it (say 30), and I would like to
have some way of distinguishing the curves from each other. Just
plotting them works well for a few curves because they come out as
different colors unless you specify otherwise, but if you do too many
you start getting repeats is there a way to have matplotlib also vary
the line style that it automatically assigns? Or perhaps someone has
another way of distinguishing lots of curves?

Best Regards,

John

Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom™ Developer Program
Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d

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6

And if you have mutually prime numbers of colors,

linestyles, widths, you can automatically generate

more distinct lines than I can distinguish… If there’s any

wxcuse for treating them as a series, I replot

when I know how many I have, and space the

colors through a colorbar.

&C
Away from home, checking mail rarely.

···

On Aug 23, 2010, at 2:11 PM, John Salvatier <jsalvati@…1342…> wrote:

By the way, I found that the following generator expression made things easy:

def styles():
return ( {‘c’ : color, ‘ls’ : style, ‘lw’ : width} for color, style, width in itertools.product(colors, linestyles, linewidths))

then you can do something like

for result, style in zip(results, styles()):
pylab.plot(result[i], **style)

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 1:22 PM, John Salvatier <jsalvati@…1342…> wrote:

Thanks!

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Aman Thakral <aman.thakral@…287…> wrote:

Hi John,

Here is a simple way to do it.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import numpy as np

fig = plt.figure()

ax = fig.add_subplot(111)

colors = (‘red’,‘green’,‘blue’,‘yellow’,‘orange’)

linestyles = (‘-’,‘–’,‘:’)

linewidths = (0.5,2)

y = np.random.randn(100,30)

x = range(y.shape[0])

i = 0

for c in colors:

for ls in linestyles:

    for lw in linewidths:

        ax.plot(x,y[:,i],c=c,ls=ls,lw=lw)

    i+=1

plt.show()

On 10-08-23 03:06 PM, John Salvatier wrote:

Hello,

I have a plot with lots of curves on it (say 30), and I would like to
have some way of distinguishing the curves from each other. Just
plotting them works well for a few curves because they come out as
different colors unless you specify otherwise, but if you do too many
you start getting repeats is there a way to have matplotlib also vary
the line style that it automatically assigns? Or perhaps someone has
another way of distinguishing lots of curves?

Best Regards,

John

Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom™ Developer Program
Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d

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Matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-users

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Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users
worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and
speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future.
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