[r] Construct a manual legend for a complicated plot

You need to map attributes to aesthetics (colours within the aes statement) to produce a legend.

cols <- c("LINE1"="#f04546","LINE2"="#3591d1","BAR"="#62c76b")
ggplot(data=data,aes(x=a)) + 
  geom_bar(stat="identity", aes(y=h, fill = "BAR"),colour="#333333")+ #green
  geom_line(aes(y=b,group=1, colour="LINE1"),size=1.0) +   #red
  geom_point(aes(y=b, colour="LINE1"),size=3) +           #red
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=d, ymax=e, colour="LINE1"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  geom_line(aes(y=c,group=1,colour="LINE2"),size=1.0) +   #blue 
  geom_point(aes(y=c,colour="LINE2"),size=3) +           #blue
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=f, ymax=g,colour="LINE2"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  scale_colour_manual(name="Error Bars",values=cols) + scale_fill_manual(name="Bar",values=cols) +
  ylab("Symptom severity") + xlab("PHQ-9 symptoms") +
  ylim(0,1.6) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(axis.title.x = element_text(size = 15, vjust=-.2)) +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(size = 15, vjust=0.3))

enter image description here

I understand where Roland is coming from, but since this is only 3 attributes, and complications arise from superimposing bars and error bars this may be reasonable to leave the data in wide format like it is. It could be slightly reduced in complexity by using geom_pointrange.


To change the background color for the error bars legend in the original, add + theme(legend.key = element_rect(fill = "white",colour = "white")) to the plot specification. To merge different legends, you typically need to have a consistent mapping for all elements, but it is currently producing an artifact of a black background for me. I thought guide = guide_legend(fill = NULL,colour = NULL) would set the background to null for the legend, but it did not. Perhaps worth another question.

ggplot(data=data,aes(x=a)) + 
  geom_bar(stat="identity", aes(y=h,fill = "BAR", colour="BAR"))+ #green
  geom_line(aes(y=b,group=1, colour="LINE1"),size=1.0) +   #red
  geom_point(aes(y=b, colour="LINE1", fill="LINE1"),size=3) +           #red
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=d, ymax=e, colour="LINE1"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  geom_line(aes(y=c,group=1,colour="LINE2"),size=1.0) +   #blue 
  geom_point(aes(y=c,colour="LINE2", fill="LINE2"),size=3) +           #blue
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=f, ymax=g,colour="LINE2"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  scale_colour_manual(name="Error Bars",values=cols, guide = guide_legend(fill = NULL,colour = NULL)) + 
  scale_fill_manual(name="Bar",values=cols, guide="none") +
  ylab("Symptom severity") + xlab("PHQ-9 symptoms") +
  ylim(0,1.6) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(axis.title.x = element_text(size = 15, vjust=-.2)) +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(size = 15, vjust=0.3))

enter image description here


To get rid of the black background in the legend, you need to use the override.aes argument to the guide_legend. The purpose of this is to let you specify a particular aspect of the legend which may not be being assigned correctly.

ggplot(data=data,aes(x=a)) + 
  geom_bar(stat="identity", aes(y=h,fill = "BAR", colour="BAR"))+ #green
  geom_line(aes(y=b,group=1, colour="LINE1"),size=1.0) +   #red
  geom_point(aes(y=b, colour="LINE1", fill="LINE1"),size=3) +           #red
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=d, ymax=e, colour="LINE1"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  geom_line(aes(y=c,group=1,colour="LINE2"),size=1.0) +   #blue 
  geom_point(aes(y=c,colour="LINE2", fill="LINE2"),size=3) +           #blue
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=f, ymax=g,colour="LINE2"), width=0.1, size=.8) + 
  scale_colour_manual(name="Error Bars",values=cols, 
                      guide = guide_legend(override.aes=aes(fill=NA))) + 
  scale_fill_manual(name="Bar",values=cols, guide="none") +
  ylab("Symptom severity") + xlab("PHQ-9 symptoms") +
  ylim(0,1.6) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(axis.title.x = element_text(size = 15, vjust=-.2)) +
  theme(axis.title.y = element_text(size = 15, vjust=0.3))

enter image description here

Examples related to r

How to get AIC from Conway–Maxwell-Poisson regression via COM-poisson package in R? R : how to simply repeat a command? session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 74 error with ChromeDriver Chrome using Selenium How to show code but hide output in RMarkdown? remove kernel on jupyter notebook Function to calculate R2 (R-squared) in R Center Plot title in ggplot2 R ggplot2: stat_count() must not be used with a y aesthetic error in Bar graph R multiple conditions in if statement What does "The following object is masked from 'package:xxx'" mean?

Examples related to data-visualization

How can I run Tensorboard on a remote server? How to plot a histogram using Matplotlib in Python with a list of data? Plot correlation matrix using pandas Adding value labels on a matplotlib bar chart ggplot2, change title size How to make IPython notebook matplotlib plot inline Construct a manual legend for a complicated plot 3D Plotting from X, Y, Z Data, Excel or other Tools Moving x-axis to the top of a plot in matplotlib Heatmap in matplotlib with pcolor?

Examples related to ggplot2

Center Plot title in ggplot2 R ggplot2: stat_count() must not be used with a y aesthetic error in Bar graph Saving a high resolution image in R Change bar plot colour in geom_bar with ggplot2 in r Remove legend ggplot 2.2 Remove all of x axis labels in ggplot Changing fonts in ggplot2 Explain ggplot2 warning: "Removed k rows containing missing values" Error: package or namespace load failed for ggplot2 and for data.table In R, dealing with Error: ggplot2 doesn't know how to deal with data of class numeric