19/04/2024 Specifying colors — Matplotlib 3.8.
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› Using Matplotlib › Colors › Specifying colors
Specifying colors
Color formats
Matplotlib recognizes the following formats to specify a color.
Format Example
RGB or RGBA (red, green, blue, alpha) tuple of float values in a (0.1, 0.2, 0.5)
closed interval [0, 1]. (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.3)
Case-insensitive hex RGB or RGBA string. '#0f0f0f'
'#0f0f0f80'
Case-insensitive RGB or RGBA string equivalent hex shorthand '#abc' as '#aabbcc'
of duplicated characters. '#fb1' as '#ffbb11'
String representation of float value in closed interval [0, 1] for '0' as black
grayscale values. '1' as white
'0.8' as light gray
Single character shorthand notation for some basic colors. 'b' as blue
'g' as green
Note 'r' as red
'c' as cyan
The colors green, cyan, magenta, and yellow do not
coincide with X11/CSS4 colors. Their particular shades 'm' as magenta
were chosen for better visibility of colored lines 'y' as yellow
against typical backgrounds. 'k' as black
'w' as white
Case-insensitive X11/CSS4 color name with no spaces. 'aquamarine'
'mediumseagreen'
Case-insensitive color name from xkcd color survey with 'xkcd:sky blue'
'xkcd:' prefix. 'xkcd:eggshell'
Case-insensitive Tableau Colors from 'T10' categorical palette. 'tab:blue'
'tab:orange'
Note 'tab:green'
'tab:red'
This is the default color cycle.
'tab:purple'
'tab:brown'
'tab:pink'
'tab:gray'
'tab:olive'
'tab:cyan'
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"CN" color spec where 'C' precedes a number acting as an 'C0'
Format Example
index into the default property cycle. 'C1'
Note rcParams["axes.prop_cycle"] (default: cycler('color',
['#1f77b4', '#ff7f0e', '#2ca02c', '#d62728', '#9467bd',
Matplotlib indexes color at draw time and defaults to
'#8c564b', '#e377c2', '#7f7f7f', '#bcbd22',
black if cycle does not include color.
'#17becf']) )
Tuple of one of the above color formats and an alpha float. ('green', 0.3)
('#f00', 0.9)
New in version 3.8.
See also
The following links provide more information on colors in Matplotlib.
Color Demo Example
[Link] API
List of named colors Example
"Red", "Green", and "Blue" are the intensities of those colors. In combination, they represent the colorspace.
Transparency
The alpha value of a color specifies its transparency, where 0 is fully transparent and 1 is fully opaque. When a color is semi-
transparent, the background color will show through.
The alpha value determines the resulting color by blending the foreground color with the background color according to the
formula
RGBresult = RGBbackground ∗ (1 − α) + RGBf oreground ∗ α
The following plot illustrates the effect of transparency.
import [Link] as plt
import numpy as np
from [Link] import Rectangle
fig, ax = [Link](figsize=(6.5, 1.65), layout='constrained')
ax.add_patch(Rectangle((-0.2, -0.35), 11.2, 0.7, color='C1', alpha=0.8))
for i, alpha in enumerate([Link](0, 1, 11)):
ax.add_patch(Rectangle((i, 0.05), 0.8, 0.6, alpha=alpha, zorder=0))
[Link](i+0.4, 0.85, f"{alpha:.1f}", ha='center')
ax.add_patch(Rectangle((i, -0.05), 0.8, -0.6, alpha=alpha, zorder=2))
ax.set_xlim(-0.2, 13)
ax.set_ylim(-1, 1)
ax.set_title('alpha values')
[Link](11.3, 0.6, 'zorder=1', va='center', color='C0')
[Link](11.3, 0, 'zorder=2\nalpha=0.8', va='center', color='C1')
[Link](11.3, -0.6, 'zorder=3', va='center', color='C0')
[Link]('off')
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The orange rectangle is semi-transparent with alpha = 0.8. The top row of blue squares is drawn below and the bottom row of
blue squares is drawn on top of the orange rectangle.
See also Zorder Demo to learn more on the drawing order.
"CN" color selection
Matplotlib converts "CN" colors to RGBA when drawing Artists. The Styling with cycler section contains additional information
about controlling colors and style properties.
import [Link] as plt
import numpy as np
import matplotlib as mpl
th = [Link](0, 2*[Link], 128)
def demo(sty):
[Link](sty)
fig, ax = [Link](figsize=(3, 3))
ax.set_title(f'style: {sty!r}', color='C0')
[Link](th, [Link](th), 'C1', label='C1')
[Link](th, [Link](th), 'C2', label='C2')
[Link]()
demo('default')
demo('seaborn-v0_8')
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The first color 'C0' is the title. Each plot uses the second and third colors of each style's rcParams["axes.prop_cycle"] (default:
cycler('color', ['#1f77b4', '#ff7f0e', '#2ca02c', '#d62728', '#9467bd', '#8c564b', '#e377c2', '#7f7f7f', '#bcbd22',
'#17becf']) ). They are 'C1' and 'C2' , respectively.
Comparison between X11/CSS4 and xkcd colors
The xkcd colors come from a user survey conducted by the webcomic xkcd.
95 out of the 148 X11/CSS4 color names also appear in the xkcd color survey. Almost all of them map to different color values in
the X11/CSS4 and in the xkcd palette. Only 'black', 'white' and 'cyan' are identical.
For example, 'blue' maps to '#0000FF' whereas 'xkcd:blue' maps to '#0343DF' . Due to these name collisions, all xkcd
colors have the 'xkcd:' prefix.
The visual below shows name collisions. Color names where color values agree are in bold.
import [Link] as mcolors
import [Link] as mpatch
overlap = {name for name in mcolors.CSS4_COLORS
if f'xkcd:{name}' in mcolors.XKCD_COLORS}
fig = [Link](figsize=[9, 5])
ax = fig.add_axes([0, 0, 1, 1])
n_groups = 3
n_rows = len(overlap) // n_groups + 1
for j, color_name in enumerate(sorted(overlap)):
css4 = mcolors.CSS4_COLORS[color_name]
xkcd = mcolors.XKCD_COLORS[f'xkcd:{color_name}'].upper()
# Pick text colour based on perceived luminance.
rgba = mcolors.to_rgba_array([css4, xkcd])
luma = 0.299 * rgba[:, 0] + 0.587 * rgba[:, 1] + 0.114 * rgba[:, 2]
css4_text_color = 'k' if luma[0] > 0.5 else 'w'
xkcd_text_color = 'k' if luma[1] > 0.5 else 'w'
col_shift = (j // n_rows) * 3
y_pos = j % n_rows
text_args = dict(fontsize=10, weight='bold' if css4 == xkcd else None)
ax.add_patch([Link]((0 + col_shift, y_pos), 1, 1, color=css4))
ax.add_patch([Link]((1 + col_shift, y_pos), 1, 1, color=xkcd))
[Link](0.5 + col_shift, y_pos + .7, css4,
color=css4_text_color, ha='center', **text_args)
[Link](1.5 + col_shift, y_pos + .7, xkcd,
color=xkcd_text_color, ha='center', **text_args)
[Link](2 + col_shift, y_pos + .7, f' {color_name}', **text_args)
for g in range(n_groups):
[Link](range(n_rows), 3*g, 3*g + 2.8, color='0.7', linewidth=1)
[Link](0.5 + 3*g, -0.3, 'X11/CSS4', ha='center')
[Link](1.5 + 3*g, -0.3, 'xkcd', ha='center')
ax.set_xlim(0, 3 * n_groups)
ax.set_ylim(n_rows, -1)
[Link]('off')
[Link]()
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Total running time of the script: (0 minutes 1.584 seconds)
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