remove colorbar from figure in matplotlib

Question

This should be easy but I\'m having a hard time with it. Basically, I have a subplot in matplotlib that I\'m drawing a hexbin plot in every time a function is called, but ev

Answer 1

I had a similar problem and played around a little bit. I came up with two solutions which might be slightly more elegant:

1. Clear the whole figure and add the subplot (+colorbar if wanted) again.

2. If there's always a colorbar, you can simply update the axes with autoscale which also updates the colorbar.

I've tried this with imshow, but I guess it works similar for other plotting methods.

from pylab import *
close('all') #close all figures in memory

#1. Figures for fig.clf method
fig1 = figure()
fig2 = figure()
cbar1=None
cbar2=None
data = rand(250, 250)

def makefig(fig,cbar):
  fig.clf()
  ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
  im = ax.imshow(data)
  if cbar:
    cbar=None
  else:
    cbar = fig.colorbar(im)
  return cbar


#2. Update method
fig_update = figure()
cbar3=None
data_update = rand(250, 250)
img=None

def makefig_update(fig,im,cbar,data):
  if im:
    data*=2 #change data, so there is change in output (look at colorbar)
    #im.set_data(data) #use this if you use new array
    im.autoscale()
    #cbar.update_normal(im) #cbar is updated automatically
  else:
    ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
    im = ax.imshow(data)
    cbar=fig.colorbar(im)
  return im,cbar,data

#Execute functions a few times
for i in range(3):
  print i
  cbar1=makefig(fig1,cbar1)
  cbar2=makefig(fig2,cbar2)
  img,cbar3,data_update=makefig_update(fig_update,img,cbar3,data_update)
cbar2=makefig(fig2,cbar2)

fig1.show()
fig2.show()
fig_update.show()