[python] Getting individual colors from a color map in matplotlib

I had precisely this problem, but I needed sequential plots to have highly contrasting color. I was also doing plots with a common sub-plot containing reference data, so I wanted the color sequence to be consistently repeatable.

I initially tried simply generating colors randomly, reseeding the RNG before each plot. This worked OK (commented-out in code below), but could generate nearly indistinguishable colors. I wanted highly contrasting colors, ideally sampled from a colormap containing all colors.

I could have as many as 31 data series in a single plot, so I chopped the colormap into that many steps. Then I walked the steps in an order that ensured I wouldn't return to the neighborhood of a given color very soon.

My data is in a highly irregular time series, so I wanted to see the points and the lines, with the point having the 'opposite' color of the line.

Given all the above, it was easiest to generate a dictionary with the relevant parameters for plotting the individual series, then expand it as part of the call.

Here's my code. Perhaps not pretty, but functional.

from matplotlib import cm
cmap = cm.get_cmap('gist_rainbow')  #('hsv') #('nipy_spectral')

max_colors = 31   # Constant, max mumber of series in any plot.  Ideally prime.
color_number = 0  # Variable, incremented for each series.

def restart_colors():
    global color_number
    color_number = 0
    #np.random.seed(1)

def next_color():
    global color_number
    color_number += 1
    #color = tuple(np.random.uniform(0.0, 0.5, 3))
    color = cmap( ((5 * color_number) % max_colors) / max_colors )
    return color

def plot_args():  # Invoked for each plot in a series as: '**(plot_args())'
    mkr = next_color()
    clr = (1 - mkr[0], 1 - mkr[1], 1 - mkr[2], mkr[3])  # Give line inverse of marker color
    return {
        "marker": "o",
        "color": clr,
        "mfc": mkr,
        "mec": mkr,
        "markersize": 0.5,
        "linewidth": 1,
    }

My context is JupyterLab and Pandas, so here's sample plot code:

restart_colors()  # Repeatable color sequence for every plot

fig, axs = plt.subplots(figsize=(15, 8))
plt.title("%s + T-meter"%name)

# Plot reference temperatures:
axs.set_ylabel("°C", rotation=0)
for s in ["T1", "T2", "T3", "T4"]:
    df_tmeter.plot(ax=axs, x="Timestamp", y=s, label="T-meter:%s" % s, **(plot_args()))

# Other series gets their own axis labels
ax2 = axs.twinx()
ax2.set_ylabel(units)

for c in df_uptime_sensors:
    df_uptime[df_uptime["UUID"] == c].plot(
        ax=ax2, x="Timestamp", y=units, label="%s - %s" % (units, c), **(plot_args())
    )

fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()

The resulting plot may not be the best example, but it becomes more relevant when interactively zoomed in.