The dpi argument accepts "figure". Would it make sense to stay consistent with that and use "figure" also for the edge-, and facecolor?

In general this makes much more sense to me than #10023. I don't understand the exitstack thingy so I will leave this for others to review.

For colors, there's already places that accept "auto" and places that accept "inherit" (specifically, legends). I'd rather not add a third spelling for the same (general) idea. (In fact I plan to deprecate "inherit" in favor of "auto", but that's a separate issue.)

"figure" is still also clearer about the origin of the value. "auto" could be anything.

So what do you think the "auto" cases of lines.markerfacecolor, lines.markeredgecolor, boxplot.flierprops.markerfacecolor, and axes.titlecolor should be named?

I see your your point @ImportanceOfBeingErnest , however I think that the ambiguity of "auto" is a benefit here because we can use the same spelling across a wide range of contexts.