How can I show figures separately in matplotlib

Question

Say that I have two figures in matplotlib  with one plot per figure   import matplotlib pyplot as plt  f1   plt figure   plt plot range 0 10   f2   plt figure   plt plot range 10 20     Then I show both in one shot  plt show     Is there a way to show them separately  i e  to show just f1   Or better  how can I manage the figures separately like in the following  wishful  code  that doesn t work    f1   plt figure   f1 plot range 0 10   f1 show

User · Answer

None of the above solutions seems to work in my case, with matplotlib 3.1.0 and Python 3.7.3. Either both the figures show up on calling show() or none show up in different answers posted above.

Building upon @Ivan's answer, and taking hint from here, the following seemed to work well for me:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1) # Creates figure fig and add an axes, ax.
fig2, ax2 = plt.subplots(1) # Another figure

ax.plot(range(20)) #Add a straight line to the axes of the first figure.
ax2.plot(range(100)) #Add a straight line to the axes of the first figure.

# plt.close(fig) # For not showing fig
plt.close(fig2) # For not showing fig2
plt.show()

User · Answer

As of November 2020  in order to show one figure at a time  the following works  import matplotlib pyplot as plt  f1  ax1   plt subplots   ax1 plot range 0 10   f1 show   input  quot Close the figure and press a key to continue quot   f2  ax2   plt subplots   ax2 plot range 10 20   f2 show   input  quot Close the figure and press a key to continue quot    The call to input   prevents the figure from opening and closing immediately

User · Answer

As  arpanmangal  the solutions above do not work for me  matplotlib 3 0 3  python 3 5 2    It seems that using  show   in a figure  e g   figure show    is not recommended  because this method does not manage a GUI event loop and therefore the figure is just shown briefly   See figure show   documentation   However  I do not find any another way to show only a figure   In my solution I get to prevent the figure for instantly closing by using click events  We do not have to close the figure     closing the figure deletes it   I present two options   - waitforbuttonpress timeout -1  will close the figure window when clicking on the figure  so we cannot use some window functions like zooming   - ginput n -1 show clicks False  will wait until we close the window  but it releases an error  -   Example   import matplotlib pyplot as plt  fig1  ax1   plt subplots 1    Creates figure fig1 and add an axes  ax1 fig2  ax2   plt subplots 1    Another figure fig2 and add an axes  ax2  ax1 plot range 20  c  red    Add a red straight line to the axes of fig1  ax2 plot range 100  c  blue    Add a blue straight line to the axes of fig2    Option1  This command will hold the window of fig2 open until you click on the figure fig2 waitforbuttonpress timeout -1   Alternatively  use fig1   Option2  This command will hold the window open until you close the window  but  it releases an error   fig2 ginput n -1 show clicks False   Alternatively  use fig1   We show only fig2 fig2 show    Alternatively  use fig1

User · Answer

I think I am a bit late to the party but    In my opinion  what you need is the object oriented API of matplotlib  In matplotlib 1 4 2 and using IPython 2 4 1 with Qt4Agg backend  I can do the following   import matplotlib pyplot as plt fig  ax   plt subplots 1    Creates figure fig and add an axes  ax  fig2  ax2   plt subplots 1    Another figure  ax plot range 20    Add a straight line to the axes of the first figure  ax2 plot range 100    Add a straight line to the axes of the first figure   fig show    Only shows figure 1 and removes it from the  current  stack  fig2 show    Only shows figure 2 and removes it from the  current  stack  plt show    Does not show anything  because there is nothing in the  current  stack  fig show     Shows figure 1 again  You can show it as many times as you want    In this case plt show   shows anything in the  current  stack  You can specify figure show   ONLY if you are using a GUI backend  e g  Qt4Agg   Otherwise  I think you will need to really dig down into the guts of matplotlib to monkeypatch a solution   Remember that most  all   plt   functions are just shortcuts and aliases for figure and axes methods  They are very useful for sequential programing  but you will find blocking walls very soon if you plan to use them in a more complex way

User · Answer

Sure  Add an Axes using add subplot   Edited import    Edited show    import matplotlib pyplot as plt f1   plt figure   f2   plt figure   ax1   f1 add subplot 111  ax1 plot range 0 10   ax2   f2 add subplot 111  ax2 plot range 10 20   plt show     Alternatively  use add axes   ax1   f1 add axes  0 1 0 1 0 8 0 8   ax1 plot range 0 10   ax2   f2 add axes  0 1 0 1 0 8 0 8   ax2 plot range 10 20

User · Answer

Perhaps you need to read about interactive usage of Matplotlib  However  if you are going to build an app  you should be using the API and embedding the figures in the windows of your chosen GUI toolkit  see examples embedding in tk py  etc

User · Answer

With Matplotlib prior to version 1 0 1  show   should only be called once per program  even if it seems to work within certain environments  some backends  on some platforms  etc     The relevant drawing function is actually draw     import matplotlib pyplot as plt  plt plot range 10      Creates the plot   No need to save the current figure  plt draw      Draws  but does not block raw input      This shows the first figure  separately   by waiting for  enter     plt figure      New window  if needed   No need to save it  as pyplot uses the concept of current figure plt plot range 10  20   plt draw     raw input      If you need to wait here too                Only at the end of your program  plt show      blocks   It is important to recognize that show   is an infinite loop  designed to handle events in the various figures  resize  etc     Note that in principle  the calls to draw   are optional if you call matplotlib ion   at the beginning of your script  I have seen this fail on some platforms and backends  though    I don t think that Matplotlib offers a mechanism for creating a figure and optionally displaying it  this means that all figures created with figure   will be displayed   If you only need to sequentially display separate figures  either in the same window or not   you can do like in the above code   Now  the above solution might be sufficient in simple cases  and for some Matplotlib backends   Some backends are nice enough to let you interact with the first figure even though you have not called show     But  as far as I understand  they do not have to be nice   The most robust approach would be to launch each figure drawing in a separate thread  with a final show   in each thread   I believe that this is essentially what IPython does   The above code should be sufficient most of the time   PS  now  with Matplotlib version 1 0 1   show   can be called multiple times  with most backends

[python] How can I show figures separately in matplotlib?

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