Motivation
Matlab and matplotlib in python are plotting packages of daily usage. They share lots of structures but also have minor differences.
For beginners using the plotting routines can suffice most daily needs, but for more refined control over layout, fontsize and so on, we need to better understand the object structure in matlab and matplotlib.
This note will summarize the structures that they both share and also note the differences between them.
Object Structure
Both matlab and matplotlib have 2 layer of structure for plot, figure and axes, the latter is kind of like a panel or subplot in the figure, but note that colorbar() can be it’s own axes.
Properties for figure
Properties for axes
Silent Plotting
Python
from matplotlib import use as use_backend
use_backend("Agg")
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
plt.ioff()
...
plt.show(block=False)
time.sleep(5)
plt.close('all')
Seems like a solution. Refer to issue
matlab
Try to plot silently in matlab is much harder. It requires exotic reference manipulation of figure and axes objects using set.
Instead of just figure(1) and subplot(121) The following will plot silently without popping up figure.
h2 = figure('Visible','off');clf;
h2.Position = [ 19 235 1779 743];
axs = {}; axs{1} = subplot(1,2,1); axs{2} = subplot(1,2,2);
set(0,'CurrentFigure',h2); %clf; %
set(gcf, "CurrentAxes", axs{i}); cla(axs{i},'reset');
% ploting, ploting
saveas(h2, fullfile(savepath, compose("score_traj_cmp_chan%d.png", channel_j)))
Export and Editing in Illustrator
Note that publication usually requires post plotting editting. And usually people do it in Adobe Illustrator.
Export the figures into pdf and read properly in Illustrator requires some tweaks in the plotting system
Python
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
matplotlib.rcParams['pdf.fonttype'] = 42
matplotlib.rcParams['ps.fonttype'] = 42
'''Ploting ploting ploting'''
plt.savefig("image.pdf", transparent=True)
You need to change the default setting to save the pdf correctly !
Ref to http://jonathansoma.com/lede/data-studio/matplotlib/exporting-from-matplotlib-to-open-in-adobe-illustrator/
More options and file formats see,
https://futurestud.io/tutorials/matplotlib-save-plots-as-file
Matlab
Same as python the default behavior of export fig is not good, pdf can have bizzare layout and size!
Plotly
For the modern plotly package, see
https://plot.ly/python/static-image-export/
Please install the dependent packages
conda install -c plotly plotly-orca psutil requests
And