I am aware of the bbox_to_anchor keyword and this thread, which very helpfully suggests how to manually place the legend:
How to put the legend out of the plot
However, I'd like to use the coordinates of my x- and y-axis in the graph to specify the legend position (inside the plot), as I might need to move the figure into a large figure with a different axis environment, and I don't want to manually play around with those coordinates every time I do this. Is this possible?
Edit: A small example is here:
import numpy as n
f, axarr = plt.subplots(2,sharex=True)
axarr[1].set_ylim([0.611,0.675])
axarr[0].set_ylim([0.792,0.856])
axarr[0].plot([0, 0.04, 0.08],n.array([ 0.83333333, 0.82250521,0.81109048]), label='test1')
axarr[0].errorbar([0, 0.04, 0.08],n.array([ 0.8, 0.83, 0.82]),n.array([0.1,0.1,0.01]), label='test2')
axarr[1].plot([0, 0.04, 0.08],n.array([ 0.66666667, 0.64888304, 0.63042428]))
axarr[1].errorbar([0, 0.04, 0.08],n.array([ 0.67, 0.64, 0.62]),n.array([ 0.01, 0.05, 0.1]))
axarr[0].legend(bbox_to_anchor=(0.04, 0.82, 1., .102),labelspacing=0.1, handlelength=0.1, handletextpad=0.1,frameon=False, ncol=4, columnspacing=0.7)
I think what confuses me is that the legend does not actually start at 0.82, and indeed for my larger plot (with 5 subplots of this type), I need to use legend coordinates bbox_to_anchor=(0.04, 1.15, 1., .102) in order to make the legend appear on coordinates (0.02, 0.83). But maybe I am getting something else wrong?
This question is related to
python
matplotlib
According to the matplotlib legend documentation:
The location can also be a 2-tuple giving the coordinates of the lower-left corner of the legend in axes coordinates (in which case bbox_to_anchor will be ignored).
Thus, one could use:
plt.legend(loc=(x, y))
to set the legend's lower left corner to the specified (x, y)
position.
You can change location of legend using loc argument. https://matplotlib.org/api/pyplot_api.html#matplotlib.pyplot.legend
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.subplot(211)
plt.plot([1,2,3], label="test1")
plt.plot([3,2,1], label="test2")
# Place a legend above this subplot, expanding itself to
# fully use the given bounding box.
plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(0., 1.02, 1., .102), loc=3,
ncol=2, mode="expand", borderaxespad=0.)
plt.subplot(223)
plt.plot([1,2,3], label="test1")
plt.plot([3,2,1], label="test2")
# Place a legend to the right of this smaller subplot.
plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.05, 1), loc=2, borderaxespad=0.)
plt.show()
In addition to @ImportanceOfBeingErnest's post, I use the following line to add a legend at an absolute position in a plot.
plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1.0,1.0),\
bbox_transform=plt.gcf().transFigure)
For unknown reasons, bbox_transform=fig.transFigure
does not work with me.
Source: Stackoverflow.com