Matplotlib - global legend and title aside subplots

Question

I ve started with matplot and managed some basic plots  but now I find it hard to discover how to do some stuff I need now     My actual question is how to place a global title and global legend on a figure with subplots   I m doing 2x3 subplots where I have a lot of different graphs in various colors  about 200   To distinguish  most  of them I wrote something like  def style i  total       return dict color jet i total                   linestyle   -    --    -         i 4                   marker             1    2    3    4    s   i 7    fig plt figure   p0 fig add subplot 321  for i  y in enumerate data       p0 plot x  trans0 y    -   label i    style i  total     and more subplots with other transN functions    any thoughts on this      Each subplot has the same style function   Now I m trying to get a global title for all subplots and also a global legend which explains all styles  Also I need to make the font tiny to fit all 200 styles on there  I don t need completely unique styles  but at least some attempt   Can someone help me solve this task

User · Answer

For legend labels can use something like below. Legendlabels are the plot lines saved. modFreq are where the name of the actual labels corresponding to the plot lines. Then the third parameter is the location of the legend. Lastly, you can pass in any arguments as I've down here but mainly need the first three. Also, you are supposed to if you set the labels correctly in the plot command. To just call legend with the location parameter and it finds the labels in each of the lines. I have had better luck making my own legend as below. Seems to work in all cases where have never seemed to get the other way going properly. If you don't understand let me know:

legendLabels = []
for i in range(modSize):
    legendLabels.append(ax.plot(x,hstack((array([0]),actSum[j,semi,i,semi])), color=plotColor[i%8], dashes=dashes[i%4])[0]) #linestyle=dashs[i%4]       
legArgs = dict(title='AM Templates (Hz)',bbox_to_anchor=[.4,1.05],borderpad=0.1,labelspacing=0,handlelength=1.8,handletextpad=0.05,frameon=False,ncol=4, columnspacing=0.02) #ncol,numpoints,columnspacing,title,bbox_transform,prop
leg = ax.legend(tuple(legendLabels),tuple(modFreq),'upper center',**legArgs)
leg.get_title().set_fontsize(tick_size)

You can also use the leg to change fontsizes or nearly any parameter of the legend.

Global title as stated in the above comment can be done with adding text per the link provided: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/examples/pylab_examples/newscalarformatter_demo.html

f.text(0.5,0.975,'The new formatter, default settings',horizontalalignment='center',
       verticalalignment='top')

User · Answer

Global title  In newer releases of matplotlib one can use Figure suptitle   method of Figure   import matplotlib pyplot as plt fig   plt gcf   fig suptitle  Title centered above all subplots   fontsize 14    Alternatively  based on  Steven C  Howell s comment below  thank you     use the matplotlib pyplot suptitle   function    import matplotlib pyplot as plt    plot stuff         plt suptitle  Title centered above all subplots   fontsize 14

User · Answer

suptitle seems the way to go  but for what it s worth  the figure has a transFigure property that you can use   fig figure 1  text 0 5  0 95   test   transform fig transFigure  horizontalalignment  center

User · Answer

In addition to the orbeckst answer one might also want to shift the subplots down  Here s an MWE in OOP style   import matplotlib pyplot as plt  fig   plt figure   st   fig suptitle  suptitle   fontsize  x-large    ax1   fig add subplot 311  ax1 plot  1 2 3   ax1 set title  ax1    ax2   fig add subplot 312  ax2 plot  1 2 3   ax2 set title  ax2    ax3   fig add subplot 313  ax3 plot  1 2 3   ax3 set title  ax3    fig tight layout      shift subplots down  st set y 0 95  fig subplots adjust top 0 85   fig savefig  test png     gives

[matplotlib] Matplotlib - global legend and title aside subplots

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