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Figure background colors #7619
Description
I find the current handling of background colors very non-intuitive:
- figure
facecoloris not applied forsavefig()by default - figure
facecoloris not applied settingframeon=False axis_bgcoloris not applied when hiding axis lines/ticks viaaxis('off')
So using a white plain surface to draw objects needs the following code:
fig = figure(..., facecolor='w', edgecolor='None')
ax.axis('equal') # equal scale
ax.axis('off') # do not show axis
ax.axis([-1, 1, -1, 1]) # scale to unit lengths
show()
fig.savefig(..., facecolor=fig.get_facecolor(), edgecolor='None', transparent=True)
My suggestion
- apply same colors to
savefig()by default - mention in the docs of
axis_bgcolorandaxis('off')that this setting is ignored - mention in the docs of
facecolorandframeonthat this setting is ignored
Reacted by Sebastian Penhouet and Nico Schlömer
Activity
tacaswell commentedon Dec 13, 2016
We are always happy to get PRs to clarify documentation!
If you do not pass a
facecolorit defaults to the value ofrcParams['savefig.facecolor']which should have defaulted to white.It is less 'is not applied' than the background patches are simply not drawn if you ask them to not be drawn.
Spenhouet commentedon May 25, 2019
Wow thanks for this thread. I was just about to write a bug report since my figures were always saved with a black facecolor instead of the correct white one (that is also rendered correct in IPython).
Just adding
facecolor=fig.get_facecolor()to the save parameters solved this.I agree that this is unintuitive.