""" ======================== Composing Custom Legends ======================== Composing custom legends piece-by-piece. .. note:: For more information on creating and customizing legends, see the following pages: * :doc:`/tutorials/intermediate/legend_guide` * :doc:`/gallery/text_labels_and_annotations/legend_demo` Sometimes you don't want a legend that is explicitly tied to data that you have plotted. For example, say you have plotted 10 lines, but don't want a legend item to show up for each one. If you simply plot the lines and call ``ax.legend()``, you will get the following: """ # sphinx_gallery_thumbnail_number = 2 from matplotlib import rcParams, cycler import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import numpy as np # Fixing random state for reproducibility np.random.seed(19680801) N = 10 data = (np.geomspace(1, 10, 100) + np.random.randn(N, 100)).T cmap = plt.cm.coolwarm rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'] = cycler(color=cmap(np.linspace(0, 1, N))) fig, ax = plt.subplots() lines = ax.plot(data) ax.legend() ############################################################################## # Note that no legend entries were created. # In this case, we can compose a legend using Matplotlib objects that aren't # explicitly tied to the data that was plotted. For example: from matplotlib.lines import Line2D custom_lines = [Line2D([0], [0], color=cmap(0.), lw=4), Line2D([0], [0], color=cmap(.5), lw=4), Line2D([0], [0], color=cmap(1.), lw=4)] fig, ax = plt.subplots() lines = ax.plot(data) ax.legend(custom_lines, ['Cold', 'Medium', 'Hot']) ############################################################################### # There are many other Matplotlib objects that can be used in this way. In the # code below we've listed a few common ones. from matplotlib.patches import Patch from matplotlib.lines import Line2D legend_elements = [Line2D([0], [0], color='b', lw=4, label='Line'), Line2D([0], [0], marker='o', color='w', label='Scatter', markerfacecolor='g', markersize=15), Patch(facecolor='orange', edgecolor='r', label='Color Patch')] # Create the figure fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.legend(handles=legend_elements, loc='center') plt.show()