How to access colors from a style used by pyplot?

Question

I can set the color style for pyplot using

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.style.use('tableau-colorblind10')

And list the available color styles using

plt.style.available

But how can I actually access the colors from the color table? plt.style will set a color table for the plots, but I would like to be able to manually select them: select the first and second color used by plt.plot.

For example:

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from numpy import pi, sin, cos

plt.rcParams['figure.dpi'] = 200

plt.style.use('tableau-colorblind10')

x = np.linspace(0, pi, 100)
sinx = [sin(xi) for xi in x]
cosx = [cos(xi) for xi in x]
sqrx = [xi*xi for xi in x]

plt.plot(x, sinx, label='sinx')
plt.plot(x, cosx, label='cosx')
plt.plot(x, sqrx, color='k', label='sqrx')
plt.legend()

Instead of the black color, I would like to use the blue color from tableau-colorblind10 again for the sqrx plot:

Your question [has been asked already](https://stackoverflow.com/q/56211675/2749397) and has an [accepted answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/56212312/2749397) that we can summarize as `colors = plt.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'].by_key()['color']` — gboffi, Jul 14 '19 at 15:13

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 26 '23 at 10:46

5

You can refer to the cycle colours as c1, c2 etc. For example:

plt.plot(x, sqrx, color='C1', label='sqrx')

edited Apr 26 '23 at 10:46

tuomastik

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answered Jul 14 '19 at 14:43

Jody Klymak

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Interesting! it seems like it should be `C0` since the blue color is the first item in the list. – steven Jul 14 '19 at 17:53
Yeah I forget if “C0” is defined. – Jody Klymak Jul 14 '19 at 17:55

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 14 '19 at 13:02

Try:

plt.style.library['tableau-colorblind10']

[Out]:
RcParams({'axes.prop_cycle': cycler('color', ['#006BA4', '#FF800E', '#ABABAB', '#595959', '#5F9ED1', '#C85200', '#898989', '#A2C8EC', '#FFBC79', '#CFCFCF']),
          'patch.facecolor': '#006BA4'})

Thus, the color should be #006BA4 and set it to the line you wanna:

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from numpy import pi, sin, cos

plt.rcParams['figure.dpi'] = 200

plt.style.use('tableau-colorblind10')

x = np.linspace(0, pi, 100)
sinx = [sin(xi) for xi in x]
cosx = [cos(xi) for xi in x]
sqrx = [xi*xi for xi in x]

plt.plot(x, sinx, label='sinx')
plt.plot(x, cosx, label='cosx')
plt.plot(x, sqrx, color='#006BA4', label='sqrx')
plt.legend()

How to access colors from a style used by pyplot?

2 Answers2

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