Legend Text Color in Matplotlib with Errorbar Plot

Question

I'm trying to get the text in my legend to match the color of the lines from the plot. There is a nice summary of how to do this by Dan, over here: Matplotlib: Color-coded text in legend instead of a line

However, it does not seem to work for errorbar plot types. Does anyone have an idea of what handle I should use to make this change?

Here's some example code that shows how it works with the plot type element, but doesn't work with the errorbar type element:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

x = np.arange(0.1,4,0.5)
y1 = np.exp(-x)
y2 = np.exp(-x)*1.2+0.25

plot = plt.figure()
ax = plot.add_axes([0,0,1,1])

ax.plot(x,y1,color="red",label="Y1")
ax.errorbar(x,y2,yerr=0.1,color="blue",marker='*',capsize=4,label="Y2")

leg = ax.legend();

for line, text in zip(leg.get_lines(), leg.get_texts()):
       text.set_color(line.get_color())

And here's an example of how that plot looks:

Code will change text color of plot types but not errorbar types

Thanks for any advice!

ImportanceOfBeingErnest · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-03 19:45:17Z

2

The .get_lines() method gives you the lines in the legend.

[h for h in self.legendHandles if isinstance(h, Line2D)]

The errorbar is not a Line2D. So in principle you could instead iterate over leg.legendHandles. The problem is then that colors are not well specified. They may be names or arrays. This needs to be taken care of such that the solution becomes a bit more complicated.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

x = np.arange(0.1,4,0.5)
y1 = np.exp(-x)
y2 = np.exp(-x)*1.2+0.25

plot = plt.figure()
ax = plot.add_axes([0,0,1,1])

ax.plot(x,y1,color="red",label="Y1")
ax.errorbar(x,y2,yerr=0.1,color="blue",marker='*',capsize=4,label="Y2")

leg = ax.legend();

for artist, text in zip(leg.legendHandles, leg.get_texts()):
    col = artist.get_color()
    if isinstance(col, np.ndarray):
        col = col[0]
    text.set_color(col)

plt.show()

answered May 3, 2018 at 19:45

ImportanceOfBeingErnest

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2 Comments

ImportanceOfBeingErnest Over a year ago

I also provided an even more general solution to the linked question.

Robert Spragg Over a year ago

Perfect, this is exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks!

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