Matplotlib styles for scientific computing

Installation

Install from GitHub via

pip install git+https://github.com/dylanljones/mplstyles.git@VERSION

where VERSION is a release, tag or branch name.

Introduction

Matplotlib allows you to customize the properties and default styles of plots. There are three ways to customize Matplotlib (see mplstyle for more information):

• Setting rcParams at runtime
• Using style sheets
• Changing your matplotlibrc file

Warning: Setting rcParams at runtime takes precedence over style sheets, style sheets take precedence over matplotlibrc files.

This project uses the third option and is intended as a collection of usefull matplotlibrc style files for scientific plotting.

Please feel free to add your own favourite styles to the libary! Start from the empty template file default.mplstyle and change the parameters you like. If you are happy with the style, add the file to the mplstyles and open a pull request.

Note: If you are using PyCharm to edit the *.mplstyle files, right-click on the file and click 'Override File Type'. There, choose the Ini file-type. This enables some synthax highlighting, which makes it easier to find uncommented sections.

Usage

The rc-files are contained in the mplstyles package. In general, any matplotlibrc file can be loaded via

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.style.use("/full/path/to/file.mplstyle")

The included styles of mplstyles can be applied with the use_mplstyle method:

from mplstyles import use_mplstyle

use_mplstyle("figures.mplstyle")  # with file extension
use_mplstyle("figures")           # or without file extension

A list of all included style files can be printed like this:

from mplstyles import get_mplstyles

print(get_mplstyles())

Examples

All examples are generated with the following code and by applying the different styles:

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y)

figures.mplstyle

plots.mplstyle